


Don't You Know Who I Think I Am? (A Mortgaged Souls AU)

by glitterandrocketfuel



Series: Mortgaged Souls [1]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Demons, M/M, Trick or Pete 2019, infinity oh high era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 12:42:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 21,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21271223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterandrocketfuel/pseuds/glitterandrocketfuel
Summary: The problem with making Deals, though, is that you can only come to the table with what's yours to deal with. And Pete, through no real fault of his own, did not.Welcome to Mortgaged Souls, where Deals are made and debts must be paid.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Many glorious thanks to the Discord pack for all the encouragement and the sprints and the brainstorming!  
Multiple gleaming adorations to the Trick-or-Pete mod crew for putting it together and herding cats the way they do. It's the fic-lords' work you are doing.  
Great oodles of appreciation to @rainbowmatic-stumpomatic over on tumblr because of their immensely talented moodboard artworks!

_Prologue (sometime around 2002)_

Pete's on top of an amp stack, ready to trust-fall into the crowd below and aware of how he balances on a precipice right at the edge of glory in multiple dimensions, when a tear in the universe happens and a split-second freeze in time puts him face to face with All That Could Be.

Patrick's golden voice is frozen on a high, clear note. The crash of the cymbals from Andy's kit shimmers around him like something tangible and made of crystal. Joe is locked in mid-spin with a frantic tangle of guitar chords wrapped around him like intricate macrame made of sound, and Pete himself is suspended at a forty-five degree angle by the love and adoration of the crowd of kids screaming along to "Dead on Arrival" and an angry snap of the E string on his bass still echoes in the frozen tableau around him.

A low, feminine voice whispers from the tear in front of Pete. It emanates from a mouth he can't see, but knows bone-deep is made of lush lips and gleaming white teeth and a throat made for golden champagne on the inside and frost-rings of diamonds on the outside. _Would you give _you _for this?_

Thing is, Pete's been asked this before. Once, when he was playing with Arma and hit the floor from a bad stage-dive, the blackout of half an instant lurched him into a liminal space, where the same voice asked the same question, only Pete hadn't quite understood then.

_Would I give what for this? _

_ Would you give _you?_ For _this?_ Them? _

Pete thought of the arguments, the flake-outs, Keith and his propensity for fist-fights, and TJ disappearing for days on end amidst promises that never materialized, Tim already wanting something harder and more political that Pete was trying to get away from. Pete and Joe skulking off to the diner to talk about music they both instinctively kept from the other members and sharing this vague sense of relief and release from the pressure of Arma. And he knew Arma was going to implode. _Would I give me for this?_ Pete repeated the question in the darkness.

_Nah_.

And he'd regained consciousness after that, none the worse for wear, and with the strange exchange feeling like a dream.

But now, with Patrick's golden voice and his plush bottom lip frozen a hair's breadth from the microphone, and the shining faces of the kids who were getting them--really getting them--following them, passing their home-burned CDs to friends, typing things in acid green letters on black screens and blinking icons--Pete was surfing on a wave of something that tasted inevitable. Not with the wishful-thinking and hopeful-dreaming of a million slacker scene kids in basements with big mouths and big spaces between their talks and walks, but something that spread out before him like a path paved with steps made of work that came with a price tag, the number of which kept shifting.

_Would you give you for _this? _For _them?

Patrick's note hung in the air, coating the entire stage in golden light. Clear-bell sound. Andy held court behind his kit as if he'd grown there, tethering Joe with a beat while the younger boy's dervish-whirl lifted his feet off the floor. And Pete? Pete hung in the air, suspended on the sounds of the horns of Jericho, taking down the wall. It seemed such a small sacrifice, to be borne on a wave of destiny.

_Yes_.


	2. It's Who You Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course it's rigged. It's Hollywood, baby.

_Don’t you know who I think I am? _It wasn’t just a catchy title for a song that didn’t actually contain those words. It was a foundation for a generation just copping to all the ways to be seen and to be exposed, but never to be known. Celebrity can be a real bitch, and Pete Wentz knows all about that. Patrick Stump, however, had to learn the hard way.

There’s a certain way things work in Hollywood for awards shows—VMAs, Grammys, et cetera. Most young, new artists don’t really understand this until they’re faced with it and awards night can feel like the biggest high…and the lowest low. For Patrick, beyond the pranking, the stunts, and the general silliness of combining “Pete Wentz’s orbit” and “fancy dress/behavioral expectations,” it was a lot of flashbulbs and famous people heralding an increasing awareness of his own inadequacy.

It started with losing the Grammy. The band were still mostly a bunch of grubby boys from the midwest who’d more or less stumbled into every amazing, exotic place they’d ever ended up (including on teevee). The fact that someone had wanted to give them an award for that felt increasingly stupid to Patrick, even if they would have won it. Los Angeles in general, never mind the surreal space that is the Red Carpet, rewarded its denizens with one hand and delivered knockout punches with the other. 

Patrick started writing the band an album that he believed should be worth an award not because it was good—From Under the Cork Tree had been good, he knew it with both bias and objectivity—but because it was groundbreaking. So he sat in a hotel room with a veggie sub (for Kanye) and stared at Garage Band with fever burning in the part of his brain where the music lived and a text file full of copypasta’d ramblings from Pete’s four AM emails, waiting for his current loops and enough of Pete’s lyrics to create a flashpoint that would start a demo. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror over the dresser, sandwich half to his mouth, still wearing those white pants that were about to be white-with-tomato when his reflection said, “I could help you with that.”

Patrick flailed so hard the sandwich went flying everywhere. Cucumbers dropped to his pants, the tomato landed with a plop on his shirt, and onions sprayed like confetti over the tabletop. “_Whatthefuck__!_”

Patrick gaped at his own reflection, which smirked at him and very deliberately brought the reflection-sandwich (still intact) to his mouth and took a bite.

In spite of not having a sandwich of his own anywhere near his mouth—the dressing was slowly soaking into his pant leg—Patrick tasted the sogginess of the bread and the weak crunch of vegetables between his teeth.

His reflection set the sandwich down—on Patrick’s lap—and leaned forward. “Oh, do close our mouth, dude. Otherwise I might be tempted to toss olives into it, and it costs some effort to get through the inferno-static barrier.”

“Urk—glargh—” was all Patrick could manage.

“So listen. I’ll be direct, because I’ve got a full schedule. There are always more losers than winners on a night like this and I specialize in losers.”

Patrick managed to get his mouth closed and find some words. “Thanks,” he said dryly. _I’m hallucinating. I must be hallucinating, that’s the only explanation. There was an edible in the goodie bag or something. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken that drink from the open bar_.

“Don’t take it personally, Sweet Roll, these things don’t work that way.” 

“I know. Pete told me. That doesn’t make it not be bullshit, though.” 

“And that’s why I’m here.” Patrick’s reflection smiled at him, wide and toothy and Pete-like only without the open honesty and joy. Patrick was 98% certain that he did not have that many teeth and that his teeth did not look that sharp. He did not want to look at his own reflection anymore. But he couldn’t look away, either.

His reflection tilted the hotel’s desk chair back dangerously far and folded his hands over his stomach. “So let’s talk about how these things really work, and how you can make them work for you.”

If anyone had asked him, Patrick Stump would have categorically denied anything even remotely close to suggesting his own reflection had offered him a chance at the recognition he deserved, the acknowledgment of his own genius, and the fame, fortune, and accolades that were rightly owed a talent of his caliber, all for the low, low price of a contractually binding agreement with an entity that controlled those very things to the point of actually being the reason for their existence. 

But nobody asked him.

Patrick told his reflection to fuck right the hell off, because a.) he was arrogant enough to believe that this new album he was writing was going to knock the socks off the critics and b.) Patrick had, in fact, met Pete Wentz and knew better from harsh experience that saying “yes” to smiles with that many teeth in them were guaranteed to end with your underwear up a flagpole and your ass in a sling.

His reflection had grinned even wider. “I’ve got time and you’ll be back. In the meantime, stay tuned—you’ll be seeing all we can do _for _you and the ridiculously reasonable cost _to _you. It’s not like you boys haven’t been on our radar for awhile now.”

“Wait—what’s that supposed—” Patrick reached for his reflection to grab his own arm as it turned away, but his fingers hit solid glass and he found himself staring back into his own reflection and this time, it was just him in the glass, trying to touch himself. _Story of my __fuckin__’ life_, he thought.

Patrick couldn’t quite believe he’d been propositioned by his own reflection, so he kept it to himself (because that’s not the kind of thing you drop in casual conversation and expect to be continued to be allowed to proceed under your own recognizance). But he couldn’t shake the curiosity about the reflection’s last words. _Not like you boys haven’t been on our radar for awhile now_.

The experience itself faded into his memories until he’d convinced himself it must have been a Kanye-and-onions-induced hallucination, brought on by the over-excitement of their first Grammy awards and meeting so many of his heroes (and finding which of them wore clay loafers and who unexpectedly behaved with grace and humility around four rowdy, overwhelmed young men). After all, people didn’t _really _make…deals like that. It was talent (though he wasn’t foolish enough to believe in talent alone), relentless drive and ambition (not everybody had a Pete Wentz and his endless factory of ideas, but they should), and a hefty helping of dumb luck.

But that didn’t stop him from double-checking his reflection, even to the point of avoiding mirrors altogether once or twice when he got an itch at the back of his neck that “looking glass” might contain a verb, the object of which was him.

He subtly asked around his circle of friends that were closer to the LA scene, but he was very circumspect. Enough so that Mark Hoppus wanted to know if he was trying to ask him out. “‘Cause, you know, I’d be into it if you wore a cute little skirt and did your eyes up like Wentz.” 

Hoppus grinned to let him know he was kidding and Patrick just shook his head. “I’m not that kinda girl, but if you ever wanna hold hands and sing love songs, we’ll lay down some tracks.”


	3. Interlude I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You get more than you bargain for when you have less to bargain with...

_Interlude (2004 or thereabouts…)_

The Deal was made. 

Pete knew Her Name as She knew his soul once her hooks had burrowed into it. She guided his actions like a little voice at the back of his mind, pushed him to push others to manipulate the reality around them until a venue opened up, a word was sent out, the door receipts were tallied (properly). She pushed his hands onto the keyboard of his sidekick or a laptop, and pushed his words out into the steadily-populating ether of a fledgling social media that no one yet quite knew what to do with. 

She pushed him open, further than he truly wanted to go, until he felt it like a too-frequent blood-draw. Touch base with him, email her, show the smile, flutter the eyelashes. _You know what he wants, tease him with the possibility of getting it. They're offering twenty, ask for thirty, they'll do it if you soft-shoe it. Your reputation must precede you. Above all, don't be boring_. 

Outside of the strange dream-spaces, spaces between moments, and heartbeat-silences where Pete's Deal was transacted, life went on, and about 97% of Pete continued as if he'd never seen the thin slice between reality and Somewhere Else. The band kept making music, the four boys went on tours that stretched further and further away from home. The trickle of kids meeting them backstage turned into a stream, then a river, then a flood, and finally a wave overwhelming their sense of "is this really happening." 

Pete's LiveJournal entries had more comments, his MySpace page swelled in popularity, he still felt so alone sometimes. Label scouts became something he could pick out of the crowd even with sweat and hair product stinging his eyes behind his growing bangs. Kids followed them from city to city and venues started paying them in cold hard cash instead of cold pizza and watery beer. Their name grew and Pete became known as the silver-tongued front man, willing to sit down with any A&R guy, every radio station host, or indie music rag journalist, pose for ridiculous photo shoots--and talk his bandmates into coming with--and deliver them all exactly what they craved from puff pieces on up-and-coming nobodies with a halfway interesting sound. Pete made scandal, he made antics, he made poor choices, and he did it all in front of well-documented cameras because while he was performing for them, he was really performing for Her. 

And perform he did. He'd made a Deal, after all. 

She ate it up. It was Her food, after all. The attention he courted in scraps from MySpace kids and in full meals from music magazines and radio interviews and MTV guest appearances made Her powerful, and Her power moved things through to him. More appearances at the right places, with the right people, at the right times. Other, more mundane, deals with a label and contracts that paid them in real money. 

Through it all, the kid with the golden voice tethered Pete in his orbit. So when She asked for more, he gave it gladly. Wrung himself inside out for as long as he could stand it, and collapsed in dark vans or dark bus bunks, shaking, sometimes clinging to Patrick while the other sang him to sleep because there was nothing he wouldn’t do for that kid.

The problem with making Deals, though, is that you can only come to the table with what's yours to deal with. And Pete, through no real fault of his own, did not. 

Pete made the Deal to give himself for the band in good faith, even if it was with elements that were of faith that fell elsewhere. But he didn't, and couldn't, know that what he bargained with wasn't wholly his own to trade. 

**

For every one of the shadows Pete gathered, Patrick dreamed of them. He closed his eyes in his bunk on the tour bus and heard them whispering. Heard Pete whispering back. And some part of him—some part of him already knew the gist of the conversation.

Not like Pete hadn’t been having his share of midnight conversations with his personal demons since Patrick first met him. It’s not like Patrick didn’t have some of those conversations himself. It’s just—they’re supposed to be metaphorical, not literal.

But the night was merciful, and the shadows and the whispers stayed in the twilight half-realm between waking and dreams. Pete continued to pay, and Patrick continued, oblivious, until the scales began to tip…


	4. Never Read the Comments Section

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's that attention you ordered...

Patrick’s jumpiness around reflections took a backseat in March when his email blew up with a sudden sleet of notifications and Google alerts from the “usual suspects” - music industry feeds, MTV’s e-news desk, and a couple of celebrity journals that Pete sometimes trolled, both anonymously and as himself. Patrick told him to cut that shit out—don’t feed the trolls and all—but all that did was encourage Pete to double down and get Joe to teach him how to make even more sock-puppet accounts (with names like “petewentzeatsass” and “wetforpstump” which just made Patrick want to make him _bleed _for Patrick Stump). But as Patrick knew so well, ignoring it was the only way to make it go away so he did until the email pings drove him crazy and he found himself a reluctant spectator (along with about two hundred fangirls) lurking on Hey Chris’s blog and a series of increasingly less-cryptic and more-savage livejournal comments on an entry aimed at Pete Wentz.

“Pete, what did you do?” Patrick called him from the studio.

“Nothing. Forget about it. Not your concern.” Pete’s voice was too thin, traveling over the airwaves. Patrick should have paid more attention, chased Pete instead of the chord progression that just didn’t feel quite on-the-nose.

“Don’t make me call Chris.”

“If you call him, tell him he knows how we deal with shit and it’s not over the fucking internet, yeah?” Pete clipped off the words and hung up.

Patrick sighed. Over the next few hours—when he was supposed to be polishing up some backing vocals and putting together the set list for a secret show Pete had insisted on booking in New York—he sent emails and texts around their circle and tried to put together a coherent understanding of why Chris suddenly turned on them. The stories were all different and nobody could seem to pinpoint what had started the animosity or who started it. And Pete certainly wasn’t talking.

The feud sprayed all over LiveJournal, spawning comment threads so nested that the ends streamed out in long tails of one character wide. From there, the power of the internet sprawled Chris's accusations of selling out onto outside blogs, spawning short "breaking news" articles of two paragraphs and editorial stock pics, opinion pieces battling for headline space at the top of the Google results page. Patrick took Pete's Sidekick away from him, stuffed Pete into his Honda, and took him to his house to pack. They had a flight to New York in two days, and a show on Friday night. Which...was a secret show. When he caught Pete on his laptop, he feared the worst, but Pete turned the screen around to show him the back-end spreadsheet of ticket sales.

His eyes were tired and his grin was ragged, but sincere. "That fucker called me a sell-out. This makes it true in the best way. Every ticket sold." The secret show was probably a good idea on paper. But Pete had played confident for the label execs and the label was all for anything that rode the wave of Grammy fame even if they hadn’t won (and Patrick was still bothered by that). Nobody else seemed quite as hung up on worrying about the next album. Just staying in the headlines for this one.

For a moment, Patrick was snapped back in time to the night after the van crashed and everybody’s blood pressure had finally returned to normal. In the shitty hotel they’d holed up in, sharing 2 rooms among the six of them to save money until the label could get them new transportation, Patrick awoke from a light, twitchy doze to find Pete, wide-eyed and awake in the dark, huddled next to him, staring at him with an intensity that practically screamed _If I look away, he’ll die and it will be my fault_.

Patrick wrapped his arms around Pete and held him tight without a word, until the shaking stopped. When dawn lightened the gaps in the curtains, Pete’s smile at Patrick’s continued presence (and pulse, he suspected) held that same ragged sincerity. “This is when it’ll all turn around, Patrick. You’ll see.” 

And it did. Pete was relentless back then. Every show, every meet and greet afterwards, even downtimes on the road had Pete’s phone to his ear, booking another college radio interview or informing a rock magazine stringer of their next three performances—he treated it like life and death—and the barely-out-of-school Patrick couldn’t hope to keep up. “You just keep that golden voice going,” Pete told him. “I’ll pay for the rest.”

At the time, it was another cryptic Pete aphorism (since Pete hardly _paid _for anything, preferring to sweet-talk Joe or one of the others into letting him share whatever they had or buy him candy at the truck stop). But now it made Patrick start thinking of things like costs and debts and things one might owe a debt to.

Patrick put a hand on his best friend's shoulder. "That's not the real point, you know."

Twenty minutes later, Pete was back on the laptop, this time typing furiously. Patrick snatched the computer from Pete's hands. "Dude. You have to let it go. Call him. Text him. Take it outside and off the goddamn internet!"

Pete shook his head furiously. "No! You don't understand! I can let a lot of things go but he's stirring shit with the fans--"

Patrick felt his own protective instincts rise and he leaned over the laptop to see what Pete had been so upset about.

The selling-out accusations were nothing new, even if he expected better from Chris. But the claim that Pete was trashing fans behind closed doors made Patrick's fist clench. The things Chris claimed Pete was saying--"This is bullshit." _Please let it be bullshit_. He knew it didn't sound like Pete at all, but the way Pete had been behaving lately, saying outrageous things in interviews or in places where Perez Hilton could hear him made Patrick wonder. "I mean, you say some stupid things for headlines but--"

Pete cut him off. "I don't talk shit about our fans," he said harshly. "Ever. They're the reason we're here at all. I know more than anyone about how that can turn on a dime. What the cost of success feels like, coming out of the inside of me..."

Pete was staring towards the window and speaking more to himself than Patrick. Patrick followed Pete's gaze, wondering if he should close the blinds, if somebody was in the bushes with a telephoto lens. But only their reflections, half-transparent with the night behind them, partially obscured by the parking lot lights showed in the window. A car pulled into the lot, headlights arcing through the orange-stained darkness and sending a glow up from the bottom of the window that seemed to reach Patrick, seated in the chair closest to the window, but enveloping Pete's reflection in shifting shadows that moved enough to have Patrick reaching for the blinds.

As Patrick lowered the blinds on his reflection, the bottom half of his face obscured by the glare of the parking lot light, the Patrick in the window glass winked.

Patrick started so badly that his arm tangled in the cord for the blinds. They bent under his weight as he lost his balance, falling towards the window as his hand splayed on the aluminum slats and beneath them, the glass itself…which for a sickening second gave way.

He jerked back and fell over the chair. He crashed into the table and ended up half in Pete’s lap.

“Jesus, Patrick, what—” Pete untangled him from the blinds. “Are you—okay?”

_I’m talking to myself in mirrors and window reflections. And my reflection isn’t nice_. Patrick shook his head. “Fine—just—thought I saw something. Let’s go over that bridge for the new song again. Tell me if it’s missing something.”

**


	5. Headlines and Flash Flash Flash Photography

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It really wasn't a Kanye-and-onions fueled hallucination after all...

atever it was, going on in that head of his, needed to play out. Patrick had to be patient because whatever part of him that was the Pete-whisperer would know where to be to pick up the pieces and catch him before he fell headlong.

It was the same sense that told him now that Pete didn’t want to go out. Patrick knew from experience that telling him so would only make Pete dig his heels in and stubbornly insist that he did, and just to prove how much he did, he’d stay out far past what his meds could handle, drink far more than his body could tolerate, and be far less discreet about what he did under that influence.

At least if Patrick were along, he’d maybe be able to steer some of that to something that needed less Tylenol and fewer explanations to Bob the morning after.

Patrick rushed through his shower and put on something nice. He risked a glance into the mirror over the bureau (which he’d oh-so-casually covered with a drip-drying vintage t-shirt weeks ago and oops! “forgot” to take down until tonight) while he worked the ends of a tie together. He was just sliding the Windsor up to his throat when his reflection gave him a wink.

“There’s a dapper boy. Got a hot date? Because I’ve got one hotter, and she’s tailor-made for you.”

Patrick jumped back and his reflection smirked, eyes filling with gold again. It was almost a better thing because it didn’t feel like staring into his own evil-looking self. More like an evil twin. “What do you want? I’m going to be late, so make it quick.”

“He’ll wait for you. He’ll wait forever for you, you know.”

Patrick’s gut curdled at the edge in his reflection’s voice. Something sub-vocal buzzed along the edge of Patrick’s consciousness that sounded like shadows thick enough to wear. _He would, you know. You know the way he looks at you sometimes when one of you isn’t paying attention. You know the way he’s always looked at you in secret moments on darkened stretches of midnight highways._

_You’ve heard the promises he whispered to you when he thought you were deep asleep_.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a hallucination, brought on by stress, self-doubt, and over-exertion and probably too much sugar and caffeine,” Patrick declared confidently. Every word came out with more certainty. 

But the louder his voice got, the stronger the back of his mind that was putting pieces together against his will, pulling information buried deep in his amygdala where the oldest, most primitive fight-or-flight instincts lived. That part of the human brain that knew it was housed in a soft, meaty body with no armor, no night vision, no speed, and surrounded by eyes in the dark and hot breath coming from between long, sharp teeth.

“Listen,” his reflection cajoled. “I know you like to have a plan. See, you’re the brains of this outfit. The other three have ambition, heart, and loyalty on lockdown, but you? You’re the smarts. You’re the one with a plan, am I right?”

Patrick blinked at his own reflection with more than a little incredulity. “Umm, have we met? Because I don’t have ‘a plan.’ I’ve never had a plan.”

“Sure you have. That plan keeps you in the studio past midnight most days. Has you throwing punches over chord progressions and getting into arguments with people who have more gold records than you have underpants. Your plan is to make your music so perfect that nobody can touch you.” His reflection leaned forward and Patrick responded by leaning back. 

_Oh God, what happens if it touches the mirror?_ He had an awful vision of Evil Twin Patrick reaching through the mirror and swapping places with him, stealing his life while the real Patrick remained stuck on the other side of a tacky oak-veneer dresser mirror with a warped frame and an edge of water damage creeping up from the bottom corner.

But his reflection stopped just short of his nose touching the glass. “You want to make music so good that they’ll forget you’re just a kid with a high school education who got thrown onto a stage by Pete Wentz.”

Patrick scowled. His reflection grinned. “I have, in fact, met you. And I respect what you want. I’d want it, too. I mean, this ain’t just your face I’m wearing here. I can get you what you want. And it’ll only cost a little. It’s not like you aren’t already enjoying a taste of our services. Why not go all in?”

“It’s amazing how many of you assholes think I’m a target,” Patrick said. The back of his mind had Questions, but he was determined to fix on the aspect of his reflection that most set him off, and that was the fact that whoever this asshole in the mirror was, he did seem to know Patrick, but the parts of Patrick that never even came out, not even in a very secret diary. And that meant that the Evil Twin in the mirror was all him. 

“Because I stand next to Pete Wentz. You think I don’t know he’s the cute one and Joe’s the one with the Good Hair and Andy’s the tough one? You think I don’t know that leaves me with being the goof. The Nerd.” Patrick shook his head. “Doesn’t matter how many times I say it doesn’t bother me, you all cite something from my LiveJournal from when I was seventeen and think I’m that same person still hung up on the girls only talking to me to get to the bassist.”

“How many of us? You talk a lot to your reflection, do you?”

Patrick shook his head. “Of course not. But you’re just those old fears and insecurities manifesting in some creative way, asking the same idiot questions the music critics go to when they don’t really follow your band or care about your scene.” He made a dismissive, waving motion with his hand. “So off you go, there’s a good hallucination. You’ve made me suitably uncomfortable and given me the right dose of self-doubt for going out with Pete Wentz next to me where there will be cameras. I’d like to get on with my night, if you don’t mind.”

Taking a gamble, because he didn’t know the effect it would have on his psyche, Patrick turned away from his reflection and jammed his hat down on his head firmly. His tie was probably crooked, but it didn’t matter because all eyes would be on Pete, anyway.

He’d crossed the threshold of his bedroom when his own voice floated out to him. “Oh, I promise you, Honey Bun, you ain’t never met an asshole like me. I’m one of a kind and I’m tailor-made. You’ll be saying yes to me because you won’t be able to say no.”

**

Patrick was shaking when he got into his car. Leaving his own jeering reflection, it turned out, was not a thing he wanted to do to his psyche. Part of him felt like Peter Pan, missing his own shadow. He forced himself to look into the rearview mirror and saw his own reflection, his own eyes. Nothing talked back. Still, he knew that this Evil Twin version of himself was lurking close by. “Look,” he said aloud. “Maybe it’s time to schedule an appointment with a therapist. We’re all under a lot of pressure, dealing with a lot of stress, it’s natural for that to—to manifest itself in…unusual ways.” 

He faltered in his one-man pep-talk. Saying the word “manifest” conjured—as did the word “conjured”—possibilities that he refused to entertain as plausible. Yes, it was unusual to hear your worst secret thoughts pop out of your own mouth when you hadn’t ever said them, but surely not unheard of. They made movies where that happened all the time. Guy’s just going along, minding his own business, when all of a sudden, four strangers pop out of his ears and start talking to him when he thinks he’s alone. The people around him start thinking he’s crazy until he meets the love interest, who thinks he’s weird, but eventually believes him long enough for him to show her proof and they end up sharing a kiss at the end.

Pete was waiting for him in front of his house when Patrick pulled up. Pete was made up in full “TMZ Bait” mode—thick eyeliner, flashy jewelry, a really loud hoodie underneath a suit jacket, expensive shoes—and clapping his hands and rubbing them together. “C’mon, let’s go. This place is the shiznit.”

Patrick kept the car in Park as he surveyed his best friend. “Only if you promise to never again use the word ‘shiznit’ in anything remotely un-ironic.”

Pete gave him his widest smile. “Trick, pop culture lingo is what keeps us real. Connected to the fans. In the scene.” Pete then did the unforgivable and attempted to curl his fingers into something resembling gang signs.

Patrick sighed. “Please don’t ever do that again. Our marketing strategy is that you’re the bad boy and I’m the dorky one, remember? I can’t be the dork if you’re out-dorking me.”

Pete’s grin grew even wider, if that were possible. “I’ll never out-dork you, but I could have my dork out—” He reached for his belt.

Patrick shot out a restraining hand as he came to an intersection. “Peter. I thought we left Porn Ninja behind?” Words could not express how badly Patrick wanted to leave Porn Ninja behind.

Pete laughed and shifted in his seat. “You love me,” he said.

“‘Course I do,” Patrick retorted. “Otherwise, I’d hafta kill ya. And I left the tarp and shovel at home.”

But while Patrick’s response was automatic, he couldn’t help noticing that Pete’s tone carried a hint of raggedness to it. Pete turned up the radio and began singing along—badly—to Britney and Patrick felt the shimmer in the air around him. Something was not right.

He glanced in Pete’s direction while a commercial was on the radio and there was nothing to sing along to and Pete’s manic smile and full-throated butchery had vanished. Instead, Pete’s amber eyes tracked the streetlights as they flickered over his face. His mouth had pulled down and Patrick only needed a second to see the telltale strain around the corners of those expressive eyes.

“Hey, listen—if you’d rather, y’know, knock off and go hit the Taco Bell drive-thru, you wouldn’t need to twist my arm about it.”

Pete blinked and the pensive quietude disappeared from his expression. He sat up straighter. “And miss out? I heard Ashlee Simpson’s going to be there tonight.”

“You have Ashlee’s number,” Patrick pointed out—rather reasonably, he might add, ignoring the little streak of plaintive longing that may or may not have been living in his midsection. “You can call her and hang out with her anytime.” _You could call me and hang out with me anytime, too. At home, just us, the way we used to before the lights of this city got into your veins like the controlled substances so freely passed around_.

Pete’s gaze sharpened. “Don’t be silly, Patrick. Seeing her’s not the same as _being seen _with her.”

“Yeah, but you’re with me. Or am I just the chauffeur tonight?”

Pete put a quick hand out on Patrick’s knee. “No—stay. Please stay. I don’t wanna—I mean, we’re here and it’d be good—good for us both to be seen. You know, keep the band in the headlines.” Pete licked his lips. “For the fans.”

_That is the shittiest excuse I’ve ever heard him come up with_, Patrick thought. But Pete’s fingers were tight around his knee. Desperate.

He stole glances at Pete for the rest of the ride. When they arrived at the restaurant, he tossed his keys to the valet. The kid caught them mid-air. “At your service, Mr. Stump.”

For some reason, he thought of his reflection. _You’re already enjoying the effects of our services. _

_Whose services_, he wondered._ What services?_ _“Stay tuned,”_ his reflection had said. But the question faded as he hurried to catch up to a Pete who was already leaving him behind in favor of the flash-flash-flash of the paparazzi.

**


	6. The (After) Life of the Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watch you work the room...

This time, it was in the mirror of the bathroom at the Knitting Factory. Patrick, washing his hands and idly yodeling the jingle from a potato chip commercial to warm up (bathrooms were great for warming up), had looked up, seen the dorky little finger-wave, and promptly hit a high C instead of the next word of the jingle, flailing water drops all over the place and hitting his right wrist on the paper towel dispenser. “Gah! Ow! What the—”

“Settle down, Sugar Smack, it’s just me, popping in to check on you. See what you think of our work.”

So it wasn’t an onion-fueled hallucination. Patrick’s heart thundered in his chest and he wondered if maybe it was a heart attack instead. “What work?”

“That room out there ain’t empty, you know.” His reflection smirked. “You boys are primed for something huge.”

Patrick raised skeptical eyebrows. “Uhh, a top-ten album, two top-ten singles, and a fucking _Grammy nomination _isn’t huge?”

“Oh you are adorable,” his reverse drawled. “Now is the time when you panic and fall apart. Seduced by the lifestyle, get too big for your britches, and the next album tanks because you’re all too full of yourselves over ‘creative differences’ and can’t catch the wave between ‘same old same old’ and ‘new and fresh.’ You need some insurance against that.”

Patrick folded his arms, now invested in winning this argument with himself and categorically denying that he was afraid of exactly that. “We have it. It’s called good sense.”

His mirror-twin threw his head back and laughed, peals of laughter that almost sounded like Patrick’s own giggles…except for the gravelly undertone his ears barely picked up, but couldn’t miss. “Oh, have I heard _that one_ before!” The man in the mirror lowered his head and stared at Patrick out of the tops of his own eyes with a knife-edged grin that curled one side of his lip up. “If I had a shiny gold coin for every one of you who swears he’s not going to lose himself in La-La-Land, I’d be sitting on a mountain of gold that would make the original California gold rush look like a speed bump. You start with just a little, but then a little won’t do it…”

“So the little gets more and more?” Patrick put his hands on the edge of the sink and stared down his reflection. “Tossing Guns’n’Roses lyrics at myself is a stretch, even at my worst and most exhausted.” He sighed. “It’s obvious I’m worried about not making it. I miss Chicago. I miss—” He broke off, not wanting to say out loud that he missed rolling in that stupid, miserable van through miles and miles of midnight midwestern highway, Pete’s head in his lap while Andy and Joe talked quietly in the front. Of the little bubble of timelessness and “Me and Pete” that belonged to no one else. When the future was still open doors, open-ended. Why he didn’t want to confess this to his own inner asshole, he couldn’t say. “I’m worried what people will think.”

“Listen Snack Shack. You know what they call people who worry about what other people think in this town? Lunch. You’ve seen a small taste of what I can do. What I’m _already _doing for you. But you could have more. More help. More insurance. I mean, you could go big-time, baby! Go big or go home, you know?” 

Somehow, he doubted a heart attack would send his lambchop-sideburned reflection into doing a bad Dick Vitale impersonation. “What—are you—” he struggled. “What do all those words even mean?” _I can’t believe I’m having a conversation—nonsensical as it may be—with my own reflection_.

“I’m just following up because you’re a prime candidate to upgrade your chances of success. With, of course, my explicit help. At very reasonable rates, I might add. It’s a deal too good to pass up when you’re so close.”

“Okay, ha ha. Joke’s over. This is some new technology Pete’s volunteered me for, isn’t it? Some sort of hidden camera practical joke.” He tapped his glasses. “Some sort of projector in my frames, right?” He plucked his hat off his head, freeing the baby-fine mop of ginger hair. “Or-or my hat, is that it?” He examined the inner band of his newsboy cap, searching for the camera or the speakers or the anything, really. Because with the talk of deals and chances, Patrick was starting to get an idea of the nature of his own reflection and the only reason he wasn’t yet gibbering in the corner was because he simply couldn’t believe it was _not _some sort of prank.

But when he lifted his head to view his reflection, the Patrick in the mirror still wore the cap. The reflection grinned and made finger-guns at him.

The reflection of the stalls behind him (covered in a weird formica pattern that reminded Patrick of blobs of oatmeal) blurred and darkened with a ruddy tinge. Reflection-Patrick’s smile grew just a bit wider, a bit sharper, a bit more toothsome. Patrick looked his reflection in the eyes he saw every day, blue surrounding the gold-hazel burst in the center. As he clutched the cap in nerveless fingers, the gold at the center of his reflection’s eyes began to bleed outward, overwhelming the blue until his eyes were an uncanny yellow—not the amber Pete’s eyes sometimes got, but an honest-to-not-human citrine. “Oh,” his reflection said, “this is the furthest thing from a joke as you can get, in this world and the next. This—” his reflection opened his arms to include the venue, “—doesn’t come for free. And it’s awfully unfair of you to leave it all to him. Remember I told you to stay tuned?” The shadows in the mirror’s background shifted, more like the reflection in the window than a mirror image. “You keep an eye out. The cost doesn’t change, but the method of payment…well that’s up for negotiation.” The shadows swelled with his reflection’s last words and Patrick saw his own forehead—already a little sweaty with pre-show nerves—sprouted two pulsing veins. No—ridges. Ridges that led up to his hairline in a V-shape, where the cap on his head crinkled to accommodate something new underneath.

When faced with his own (somewhat cherubic, as much as he hated to admit and Pete never failed to bring up) features shifting into something decidedly not celestial, Patrick did the only reasonable thing he could think of. He bolted.

**

Patrick had never been so happy to be under a spotlight and away from shadows as he was that night. He fiddled with his cap maybe more than usual, just to reassure himself that the top of his head had the same thinning hair as it always had. He turned to the mirror behind Andy when he took a water break to ease his throat and met his eyes in the mirror to make sure it was the same blue-lake gaze he’d always met.

Pete bantered with the audience, working them up and tossing out only occasional non-sequiturs. “Sorry I’m a little down, I just threw up an hour ago,” caused Patrick to send a sharp glance his way. Pete looked fine. But an hour ago Patrick was in the bathroom warming up and about to be paid a visit by an evil mirror-mirror universe version of himself. 

That back part of his mind that liked to put things together like chord progressions and loops and melodies was making connections even as the rest of him tugged his hat lower over his eyes and sang _Honorable Mention_ like greeting an old friend. For a minute there, he was playing to a half-empty bar again, the only roadies himself and the three other people on stage with him (and maybe Matt or Charlie).

When a fight broke out in the pit, Pete betrayed himself. “Hey, man. Fighting at a Fall Out Boy show is as dumb as fighting on LiveJournal.” Joe kept playing a melodic riff while Pete waited for the ruckus to settle and Andy kept the beat and a wary eye on the crowd in case it turned, but Patrick was watching Pete, so he saw the shadows that could have been a stutter with the lights as the techs compensated for the pause in the show.

But when the shadows started to move? He stopped thinking he was hallucinating from exhaustion and started suspecting that he was just too tired to maintain a fiction of not seeing them. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught his reflection behind Andy’s drum kit and instead of both hands firmly on his guitar, his reflection tipped his hat.

Having had enough of being jumpy, Patrick strummed a loud riff of the beginning of Sugar and the crowd swelled with cheers. Pete brought himself back out of wherever he’d gone and spoke into the microphone. “This song is why we don’t play small venues anymore.” He glanced over at Patrick with a slight frown. Patrick glared back and they swung into the song.

Patrick avoided the mirror behind him, throwing himself into playing and singing and telling himself that feeling of being watched was from the mass of people in front of him and not anything that might be behind him. Besides, Andy was behind him and if anybody could take on something that crawled out of a mirror, it would be Andy Hurley.

When the bass line for _Dance, Dance_ started, Patrick caught another glimpse of something unusual coming from offstage, but this time, it was just Mikey Way, coming in to join them for the song. Patrick one-arm hugged the My Chem bassist and moved aside so he could slip into Pete’s personal space and play back to back. Patrick threw himself into performing the hit and tried not to think about feeling possessive over Mikey’s closeness with _his _best friend (because that was something for fourteen-year-old girls to do on LiveJournal). But Mikey’s presence prompted that back part of his mind to put things a little more together. If anybody in his circle of friends could answer weird questions of the “get you locked in a padded cell” nature, it would be one of the Way brothers.

Patrick dove back down into the performance until _Saturday_. Pete had started going to the front of the stage during the song and high-fiving the fans, crowd-surfing while Keith played his bass line and the kids squished up against the barriers adored him. As they started the song, Patrick sent a “pulse-check” look back at Pete, behind and to his left, and caught another glimpse of himself in the mirror. The Patrick in the mirror made finger-guns at him while Patrick’s own fingers stuttered over the frets of the guitar. Patrick was going from scared to annoyed this was happening so often. Then he caught a look at Pete in the glass.

Pete was climbing to the top of an amp stack under the balcony and—dammit, he was reaching for the balcony railing and that was higher than Patrick was comfortable. High up in the shadows by the lights. Patrick kept half an eye on him while he sang about the afterlife and Pete screamed the words along with him from up in the rafters where the shadows swirled around him. Patrick didn’t look behind him but the feeling of being watched pressed against the back of his neck like a hand as they led into the last chorus.

Pete wore the shadows when he fell backward from the balcony into the audience, bathed in the heat of a spotlight. As Patrick watched in horror, the crowd swirled and surged and a thin part opened up right under where Pete had stood. Some people reached out haphazardly, in an attempt to catch him. Instead of buoying him up—as he so desperately needed—all they did was slow his fall somewhat. Pete crashed to the earth like a fallen angel and a voice sounded in Patrick’s head—almost as if it came through the private-line mic at the back of the stage (near the mirror). “Nothing’s for free. You can pay easy or you can pay hard, but in the end, you always pay in full.”

**

Patrick approached Mikey Way like a wary crab after the show and Mikey noticed. “Just come out and ask, already, Patrick.”

Patrick sighed. He wound amp cords around his forearm like they didn’t have a host of people who had good union jobs to do it and studiously focused on Mikey’s hands folding his bass strap rather than his face. “This isn’t something you just blurt out but…do you know of…um…like…do you know anybody who gets, like, extra help?”

Mikey stared up at him. “You should never be ashamed of asking for help, Patrick. If you need a therapist, I can give you the office number for mine—”

“Not that kind of help,” Patrick cut in. “Not that I don’t think it’s great you’re getting what you need. I’m talking about…other help.”

“Dude, you’re in LA. If you want pharmaceuticals just go outside and stick your tongue out. The coke fairy delivers.”

Patrick flinched. “Not that kind of help, either. I mean _other _other help.” He lowered his voice, feeling stupid but desperate enough. “Like…other…_worldly _help?” _Please don’t think I’m looking for a church_. “The kind that makes deals that make…things…happen? Good things? Lucky things?”

Mikey stood up and really looked at him. “You don’t need that shit, man,” he said sternly. “God, Pete was right. You really do have too little faith in yourself.”

Patrick huffed. “Not for me!" But at least Mikey hadn’t told him there was no such thing. “So it is a thing,” he said grimly. “I think we’ve attracted…attention. I don’t know what to do.”

Mikey snapped the clips of his guitar case shut and rose. “Gimme.” He dug into his back pocket and pulled out a Sharpie. Patrick stretched out his arm and Mikey wrote a number on it. “That’s somebody local here. They might be able to put you in touch with somebody out there.”

Pete’s crowd-surfing fail at the show left him on the floor until he was hauled back up on stage by security and he recovered with a sheepish grin and a “stay humble ‘cause you never know when you’ll land on your ass” to the crowd as they left the stage, but back at the hotel, the fall’s effect was showing. Pete moved stiffly and mottled bruises were blooming up and down his back.

“Looks like I’m skipping the afterparty,” Pete said when Bob escorted them to the hotel. 

“I’ll make your excuses,” Patrick retorted. Charlie brought them ice packs from the kitchen and Patrick ordered room service (which he still felt guilty about doing because Jesus fuck seventeen dollars for a hamburger and some chips and one soggy pickle? Come _on!_).

“What’s that number? You getting lucky tonight?” Pete poked him as he settled him into bed with ice packs and towels. 

“Maybe.” Patrick set one towel aside and tossed it over the mirror.

“Aww, I thought I had your heart, baby.” Pete’s voice was starting to thread as the Ambien and painkillers kicked in.

“‘Course you do.” Patrick shoved Pete over on the bed as he adjusted an ice pack over a particularly vicious-looking bruise right on the swell of Pete’s ass. Maybe he let his hand linger over the curve and maybe he gave it a squeeze for laughs, but maybe he meant it, too. “But you don’t put out so I got to get my lovin’ somewhere else.” 

He set the TV to whatever HBO was playing and turned the volume down so Pete wouldn’t feel alone. “Don’t forget to toss those cold packs to the floor when they start to melt, otherwise they’ll get the bed wet.” 

“Mmm,” Pete mumbled. “I’d totally do you, Patrick Stump. You know I would. You’re fucking hot.” One amber eye peeked up from his bangs, twinkling bright with something Patrick wouldn’t let himself take seriously. _We’re big-time now_. Crushes were for naive kids in shitty vans who thought a fast-talking twenty-five year old with big dreams hung the moon.

“No one’s around, Pete, you don’t have to ham it up for the cameras when there aren’t any.”

Pete slumped a little further down. “Who says I’m hamming? You’re my true-blue, Tricky-poo.”

“Call me that again and the next balcony you climb, I’ll push you off myself.”

“I’d do it.” Pete giggled. “I’ll be your Romeo and you can be Juliet up there all hot and unreachable. The Claire Daines to my Leo DiCaprio.”

Patrick grabbed Pete by the shoulders and strong-armed his limp body into a semi-upright position and made sure the pillows behind him were stacked properly. _It’s the Ambien talking. He’s always like this when he takes Ambien. Side effects may include outrageous flirting with your best friend and complete memory loss of said flirting when the dosage wears off_. “Can I skip the part where we both die uselessly thanks to miscommunication?” His tone was light but just under the surface lived a too-fresh memory of two missed calls on Patrick’s phone from Pete and one terrifying one from Pete’s mom at the hospital. “Let’s just be Pete and Patrick and save the drama.” He placed Pete’s Sidekick on the nightstand next to him. “If you need me, I’ll pick up.” _This time_, he doesn’t say out loud.

He went to the afterparty for as long as it took to make the rounds and even that felt too long when the bloggers wanted to talk about the internet brawl and the music mag stringers wanted to talk about the meaning behind Pete’s fall. “It was just bad timing. Sometimes you get unlucky. It happens,” Patrick kept saying to them. And to the bloggers, “You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet.”

When he got back to the room, he let himself in quietly. Pete was out cold in a wet puddle. Patrick set the room key on the dresser and the towel over the mirror fluttered. “Told you to stay tuned,” the mirror whispered. 

“Shut up,” Patrick hissed back. He pointedly turned his back to the mirror and started cleaning up around Pete. His bed was a mess and Patrick wouldn’t leave him like that.

Pete shuffled upright, his head lolling on Patrick’s shoulder when Patrick moved him from the wet bed and stripped off his basketball shorts and underwear. “Mmm,” Pete mumbled. “You trying to get me naked, Stump?”

“You’re soaking wet, Wentz.”

“Mmm, wet for PStump.” Pete chuckled. 

“Not as appealing when you’re a dude.” Patrick did his best to towel off the wettest parts of Pete—his ass and the backs of his legs—and tried not to think about having a wet, naked Pete at his mercy.

Pete tumbled back onto the only remaining bed before Patrick had gotten the blankets pulled all the way back. Patrick had to wrestle him from one side of the bed to the other to get the sheets undone, and it was harder than it looked. Pete seemed to have developed an extra set of limbs and they were all trying to wrap around Patrick.

Finally, he got Pete settled. Patrick exchanged the dress pants and button-down shirt he’d worn for the afterparty for a 504 Plan t-shirt and a pair of threadbare sweats, then turned out the lights and slid between the sheets next to Pete, who immediately latched himself onto Patrick. “You take such good care of me, Patrick.”

Patrick ducked his head. “I’d take a bullet for you. You’re my best friend. That will never, ever change.” It wasn’t a shitty van in the middle of a cornfield, but the lights streaming in from the city outside could almost be the glow from a purple sky, with Pete riding shotgun in the bed next to him instead of a sprung van seat with torn upholstery. “I love you, Pete.”

“Love you. Kiss me?”

Patrick’s belly twisted. It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed—Pete kissed him all the time. For fun, for pranks, for audience reaction. Quick pecks on the cheek or lips or the back of his neck during a show just to throw him off a spiral of self-consciousness or a bout of nerves. Buried his nose in Patrick’s neck to just breathe against his skin in the van or backstage in the dark waiting for a show to begin, breathing open-mouthed, his lips against Patrick’s neck when things got to be too much in his head or outside of the world and he needed his world to shrink down to just Patrick.

And Patrick told himself not to read too much into those lip-prints, those tastes. They were just Pete, being Pete. He kissed a lot of people, and kissed them where everybody could see and nobody could be sure if he meant anything by it at all.

But it meant something to Patrick. Patrick _didn’t _kiss people where everybody could see. He didn’t _want _other people to see the people he kissed. He saved his kisses for the dark.

It was dark now, in the hotel room even though New York City was lit up like day outside the curtain. He pressed his lips to Pete’s, just to give his best friend the touchstone he needed of Patrick’s lips against his. But Pete’s lips were soft and pliant and opened under his and before he remembered it was Pete, his tongue was twisting against Pete’s, drawing back and flicking forward as Pete melted for him, hands coming up to thread through Patrick’s hair and pull him closer until Patrick remembered that this was Pete who _wouldn’t _remember and broke the kiss, leaving a few shards of his heart on Pete’s lips. Not to be helped, but freely given anyway. Little pieces of him always seemed to find their way to Pete one way or the other.

“You take such good care of me, Patrick. And I’m taking care of you. You’ll see…the cost…not too much. Never too much for you…for us…for this.”

Patrick’s body went cold. “Pete?” The talk of costs and prices and payments couldn’t be a coincidence and it was about time he started acknowledging that.

“Mmm?”

“What did you do?” He asked carefully. “Who do you owe?”

“‘S’nothin’…no big deal…nothing I can’t handle.” Pete trailed off and went slack. 

“Ahh, that was refreshing. Didn’t know you had it in you, Sport.” The voice floated out from the opposite wall of the room, where the towel over the mirror fluttered again, this time in a stronger breeze from nowhere inside the room. “Or have I been making the wrong offer all along. Maybe you want to have _him _in you. I could help with that, too.”

Patrick, wide awake in the dark, glared over at the covered mirror. “Whatever you are, whatever you want, you stay away from him!” He whispered furiously.

“Sorry, Fun Size, but that’s not a term you get to dictate. He makes his own deals.”

Oh. Oh fuck. “This isn’t over,” he hissed at it.

The mirror’s hissing laugh answered back. “Oh Tootsie Roll, it’s just beginning.”

**


	7. Chapter 7

Patrick called the number Mikey Way had scrawled on his arm and found it was an occult shop out in one of the boroughs. The lady on the other end of the line gave him subway directions. Pete didn’t remember a thing he’d said last night. He’d scheduled an interview with a New York lifestyle magazine about Clandestine, so Joe went merrily off to see his girl at the University, and Andy—probably slipped into the sewers and connected with some sort of underground anarchist cell or maybe found the real Ninja Turtles. Patrick sent him off with a wave and a, “Get Donatello’s autograph for me!”

“Bold of you to assume turtles can write,” Andy retorted before disappearing into the sea of humanity.

Patrick followed the subway directions to get to the shop and, once there among the scents of old books, beeswax, and some sort of incense that was making his asthma go bonkers, delivered a stuttering explanation about his reflection with a lot of qualifiers like, “I know it’s probably just my subconscious talking,” and “I really should get more sleep, maybe,” and, “I swear I am not on drugs but I think I’m being haunted.” (That one was his opener).

The raven-haired woman behind the counter, wearing a nametag that said “HELLO my name is ARTEMISIA” listened politely for about five minutes before holding up a hand. “That’s not being haunted,” she said. “I can do hauntings. I know hauntings. That sounds like a good old-fashioned demonic entity. Are you Catholic?”

“I—er, no.”

She made a face. “Pity. They have a whole arm of the Church that’ll look into demons for you.”

“Like in the movies?” Patrick raised a skeptical eyebrow.

She nodded. Her impossibly black hair fell forward to obscure one amethyst eye. An eye he would bet good money wasn’t naturally that purple. “Although nine times outta ten it’s teenagers and not demons. You around teenagers a lot?”

“Thousands,” he muttered, feeling like this was going nowhere. And he wasn’t really willing to trust some random “colorful” person, even recommended by the Way brothers, with some of the suspicions he was having. “Look, do you have, like, a book or something? Maybe a basic primer on deals with devils or something?”

“Oh, you don’t want to mess with that shit,” she said, sounding eerily like Mikey Way.

“Yeah, I know,” he finally snapped. “But it’s messing with me, so I think I have to deal with it somehow and I don’t have the first clue! Mikey said—”

“Mikey?” Her entire demeanor changed. “Mikey Way? Well why didn’t you say so!” She came out from behind the display of overpriced crystal balls on ornate silver stands and matchboxes full of incense cones and brass burners and pointed towards the back of the shop where a beaded curtain obscured what lay behind it. Feeling a little like he might end up stuffed into a cargo container and shipped off to fuck-knew-where, Patrick followed because he was just desperate enough to have started putting together a theory and if that theory were true, he was going to need a lot of practice.

Behind the bead curtain, he followed her down a narrow hallway with boxes full of stock you’d expect to find in an occult shop lining either side. Black candles, books with cats and sparkles on the covers, bubble-wrapped bottles that sent up a cacophony of scents that overpowered even the incense from the front, baggies full of dried flora of questionable provenance, and a rack of long black cloaks that Pete would have instantly seized. _The cost isn’t too much for you._

_I’ll be the judge of that_.

She led him into the back room. Contrasted with the crowded, cluttered mess out front and in the hall, this room was brightly lit, ridiculously clean (even for a turn-of-the-century storefront), and all but empty except for two folding trestle tables and a spotless area rug with a pattern on it. One of the trestle tables had cartons on cartons of plain old Morton’s salt, large bottles of Elmer’s glue, and two jugs of distilled water. A large roll of burlap lay at one end of the carpet and she kicked it with the toe of her witchy-looking boot.

The burlap rolled out to reveal a large pentagram painted on the sacking in thick black lines, scribed by a circle. She smoothed out the burlap and pointed to the center. “Stand right in the middle, please. No touching the lines.”

“Er—will this hurt?”

“Not if you’re a human.” She flashed teeth at him.

“Last I checked, I was fully human.”

“We’ll see.” She looked at him up through her bangs. As he stepped into the circle she ran her hands through her hair and pulled it right off her head.

As he gasped, she grinned again and swirled off the cape she’d been wearing and toed off the witchy boots. She stood in sock feet, black leggings, a green tunic, and a short, dishwater-blonde pixie ‘do and shrugged at him. “It helps sales if you look the part.”

“Ah…yeah, I know a little something about that.” He let his hands droop down to the sides. “My best friend is much better at looking the part. I just…play the background music.”

She crossed to the table and pulled out one of the glue bottles. “It sounds like you do a little more than just that.” She shook the bottle and knelt at the edge of the burlap and squeezed a thick line of glue onto the black-painted circle line. As she crab-walked around the circle, she explained her actions. “So the trick to dealing with anything stranger than human is the same as dealing with humans—you gotta have your boundaries.” She ended where she began with the glue, then took a canister of the salt and began carefully pouring it over the glue ring. “The glue keeps the salt in place and the cloth keeps my circles neat. The neater the circle, the better the hold, and the last thing you want is for something like a cat or a breeze to break your salt circle.” She poured the line of salt thick and it sparkled under the very normal overhead fluorescent lights. 

Patrick felt a little stupid in fluorescent light, on a carpet on a linoleum floor that could have been an office, standing (more like shifting from foot to foot) in the middle of a pentagram while a lady who wore a wig to look like a witch but really kind of looked like a boho real estate agent drew pictures around him with salt and glue. But then he thought of the mirror not only sassing him back, but fluttering the towel last night as if whatever was in it might be able to come through. That thought, more than most, scared him enough to stand very still. “Breaking the salt circle is bad, I take it?”

“Mm-hmm.” She reached the end of the circle. “There!”

Patrick didn’t see any special effects and to her credit, Artemisia didn’t do any weird Stevie-Nicks dances or chanting or anything that might show up on the security camera footage (and later on, TMZ, if she realized who he was). All she said was, “The circle is cast and this space is sealed.”

Patrick’s ears popped and while nothing physical changed, the air did sort of feel a little more…cozy. “What just happened?”

“Don’t be embarrassed.” She flashed another smile at him as she stood and dusted off the knees of her leggings. “I’m just looking under your clothes, so to speak. Being inside the circle is like an x-ray.” She folded her arms and leaned against the table with the salt on it, then stared hard at him, like she really did have x-ray eyes.

Patrick’s hands twitched in a reflexive cover of his crotch. “So…what do you see?” And why should I believe you.

She narrowed her eyes. “Hmm…It’s funny, but I do see something around you. Not…quite…connected to you, but—” She stepped closer, coming to the very edge of the circle so that her sock feet almost touched the circle’s rim. She held up her hands, palms out, like a mime and moved them closer, as if she expected resistance.

Patrick’s back teeth itched once her hands were past a certain point. Some back-room part of his brain had already accepted a certain level of reality about the circle’s existence and the rest of him was catching up quickly.

She pressed against the circle’s barrier. When her fingertips “touched,” she let out a loud gasp. “Holy shit that’s a hole!”

Patrick fidgeted. “What—does that mean?”

Her brows gathered in a frown. “That can’t be right. You—it’s not logical. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Lady, I’m standing in the middle of a pentagram after telling you my mirror’s been talking back to me. I think we passed ‘making sense’ a little bit ago. Just tell me what you see, and use simple words, okay?”

She blew out a sigh. “Okay, fair enough. I’ve never seen something like this, and I’ve been at this for twenty years, give or take. But there’s a—a hole. Like you’re— you’re not all there.”

“I’m a musician in a rock band. None of us are ‘all there’ according to a lot of people.” Just to reassure himself, he patted his pockets, his waist—_that’s all here, at least_—a hand on his ass-cheek, and another over his crotch—_that checks out, too, even if it hasn’t gotten much mileage since Anna_.

“Not that way.” She cupped her chin in one hand while the other cradled her elbow. “Whenever I put a person in the circle to see if they’ve attracted something, I can see it. It’s usually a parasite, like an energy leech, or consensual hooks they share with someone in an unhealthy relationship. Occasionally, somebody will have attracted a haint or a poltergeist, especially if they’re around teenagers a lot. Hormones, you know.” She smiled through her fingers.

“So what makes me different enough to get a holy shit out of you?” Patrick was starting to feel more comfortable about the space he was in. Almost as if he could sense the “walls” of the circle and they sort of…slid sideways into his reality like the keyboard of Pete’s sidekick slid into the back of the screen.

So when Artemisia stretched her fingertips out to brush against the circle’s boundary again, Patrick felt it. A weird little shimmer-shiver of the air between him and the witch. “You…do not have anything extra. I mean, I can see the lines between you and what I presume are friends, lovers, family—they’re mostly inert and fully benign.”

“Are they—do they look different?” Now that his reality had shifted, he was ready to be curious about it. Much like his reality shifted the night they played Saturday for the first time and he’d looked over at Pete and started to _believe_. What did his tether to Pete look like?

But she shook her head. “Not to me, no. But I don’t know you. You could probably tell if you learned how to look. But those aren’t important or unusual. Everybody has them. You…have something that everybody else doesn’t. Or rather, you don’t have something.”

Patrick laced his fingers together in front of him to keep from nervously flailing. “A hole, you said?”

She nodded. “When I look at you in the circle, I see most of you, but not all of you. There’s a part of you that’s just…not there. Like a missing limb. You don’t have any prosthetics, do you?” He shook his head and she nodded. “It’s like you’re missing your other half. That’s something you might see in a couple that’s been married forever, or twins, or very close lifelong friends when one of them has passed away, but even that doesn’t describe it.” 

She began to pace, circling him like a tailor eyeing the way a suit jacket hung on him. Or like that jerk fashion designer who tried to dress him for an early Grammy reception and stuffed him into this awful tunic, then declared Patrick wasn’t the “proper canvas” to “display his creation” and flounced out as quickly as he’d flounced in (Pete had flipped the guy off and told him he was a hack who couldn’t dress up a dog for Halloween).

“In those instances, you can see where the tear happened. You have two people who’ve sort of—” she brought her hands together and threaded her fingers, “—joined themselves. Like holding hands, only with their souls. So when one is gone—” she pulled her fingers apart and wiggled them, “—you can see the tear, but the person that’s still around still has their hand.”

She gestured to his left hand. “You, on the other hand—pardon the pun—are missing, like, an entire arm. And maybe a shoulder, too. But nothing’s been…severed.” She searched his face, seeing him but not really seeing him and Patrick felt a little curdle begin in his hind-brain. “Like, you just weren’t even born with a whole one.”

“A whole what?”

“A whole soul.”

Artemisia stared at him for another few minutes before taking one toe and cutting it cleanly through the salt glued to the mat. Patrick’s ears popped again, and the weird closeness of the air dissipated. Even the temperature cooled a bit as fresh air rushed in. 

“Look,” she said. “I don’t want to scare you, and I won’t be insulted if you go get a second opinion, but I’ve literally never seen anything like you before. You shouldn’t even be walking around.” As if to prove her point, she put a gentle hand on his upper arm. When her fingers made contact, static electricity jumped into his skin through his denim jacket. And his hoodie and his shirt.

She drew her hand back and shook it lightly. Patrick suddenly needed to be away from her but didn’t want to just run out of the store. “Uh, do you have a bathroom I could use?” After a beat, he added, “And maybe something to cover the mirror with? Just in case?”

She nodded. “Door at the end of the hall. And don’t worry—the mirror’s covered by default. I’ve been doing this far too long to be careless.”

True to her word, the bathroom did have a cover over the mirror. A tiny curtain of indigo blue fabric with gold moons-and-stars accents and gold fringe at the edges and the bottom obscured the glass entirely. He made sure not to disturb the curtain when he splashed his face. _You don’t have a whole soul_.

What did that even mean? He wasn’t really a believer and didn’t subscribe to the “You must do/be/think/believe/abstain from everything except this narrowly prescribed path in order to avoid inevitable and eternal doom and also give us ten percent of all your money and worldly wealth too” preaching fire and brimstone found on the weird radio stations out in the middle of nowhere. _And yet_, the little voice in the back of his head that was smarter than the rest of him cautioned, _some of that stuff’s looking a lot more likely than not_.

He dried his hands with a paper towel printed with lilacs. “I am not buying holy indulgences off an Elvis impersonator at a tent revival outside Nashville to keep my mirrors from talking back to me.”

Outside again, he found that Artemisia had replaced her wig and cape. She stood by the beaded curtain leading out into the shop proper with a paper bag of items tied with a little purple bow.

“So listen,” she said when he approached, “Probably the reason you’re being bothered by…stuff…is because you have this—this vacancy.” She shook her head again. “People without whole souls don’t exist. If you have a body, you have a soul. But yours is partially just—not here. Not with you, anyway.”

Patrick rubbed the back of his neck. “Where else would it be? And how much do I owe you? And what is all this stuff?” He peered into the bag and saw several books.

“Reference books.” She patted the bag and gave him the total. “The only other time I’ve ever heard of someone with a split soul is…well, it’s considered fiction. Lore, by most scholars. Powerful mages could seal off a part of their souls into something called a phylactery. A talisman they could hide in a vault and use to prolong life or come back from near-death.” She tapped the bag. “The story’s in there, along with a few guides on practical casting, banishment, and protections.”

“Umm…thanks?” He pulled out his wallet and thumbed bills until he came up with the right amount. “Not that I don’t appreciate the insights, but I didn’t plan on having to practice witchcraft on top of my, uh, day job.”

Artemisia shrugged. “I used to be a real estate agent. Lower Manhattan. I could have made bank. Then the family business came calling. It’s kind of hard to resist once it gets in your blood.”

Patrick thought of sweaty summer nights in an apartment in Roscoe Village, Pete’s lips next to his ear. _Thirty-five people, Trick. Next time, it’ll be fifty. After that, a hundred. You’ll see_. And Patrick believed him. Next time it was only a dozen, but the time after that, a hundred people at a house party and people hitting him up for homemade CDs Joe had burned on his parents’ computer. 

He also thought of Christmas a few months ago, when he’d gone home to his mom’s and overheard his mom and his aunt talking quietly in the kitchen after dinner about how Patrick was just like his father and his mother could only hope that he saw more success than David because he certainly hadn’t listened to her when she told him to think about getting a ‘real job.’ “It’s in his blood, Patricia,” Aunt Brenda had said. 

_Hard to resist when it gets in your blood_.


	8. Interlude II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've got a dark alley and a bad idea in my brain...

_Interlude III (2006)_

Taking the pics was Pete's own idea. He barely remembered New York, especially not the night of the show after he fell. When he closed his eyes, he saw vague flashes, scraps of dream. For a moment, he’d been whole. Patrick’s voice low in his ear, Patrick’s body warm against his. Then LA again and sleep slipped away once more, leaving him alone.

Incomplete. Unseen. He chewed Ambien and his fingers slipped over the keys, thumbs slipped along the tiny phone screen with clumsy imprecision as he worked up a draft of another post. He wanted—needed—to be seen. He needed someone to see this—empty part of him and tell him there was something there. 

_Do it. Take the snap. Show them what you are. A head-fucked, heart-fucked tangle of longing that only shows itself as lust_.

His hands went to his fly. He wasn’t thinking of anyone when he pushed his jeans down past his hips. He wasn’t hearing the song always stuck in his head, sung by the voice he knew better than his own. 

He didn’t plan to send the message. He put the pic in it and typed lines about seeing and knowing. He stared at his own empty gaze in the mirror, looking for the soul behind it and coming up short. 

Then, his reflection began to fade. Pete panicked and dropped the phone. His image snapped back into place as he scrabbled for the device. He caught the phone in an awkward grip. The message was still open. 

There was no way Pete could ever tell anyone about how the message really got sent. No one would believe that he stood stock-still and staring into the bathroom mirror while his reflection twitched its thumb over a Sidekick that only existed as bent light reflected off silvered glass and the message flew into the ether when he _never touched the Send button_. “Oops,” his reflection said with a smirk.

Hours later, he wouldn’t even believe it himself.

The rest…would go down in history and be remembered for centuries.

_Just one mistake is all it will take_.


	9. I Cast a Spell Over the West

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a love song in my own way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again - hat tip to @rainbowmatic-stumpomatic for the moodboard. They are very talented and take requests which is a good thing, because I'm lousy at making moodboards.

Patrick took a crash course in arcane philosophy thanks to the books Artemisia provided for him. He learned how to cast a circle, when to cast a circle, when to put a pentagram inside it, how to confront whatever ended up inside that circle, and how to make it go away. He practiced on an old Gibson guitar, perched on its stand in the middle of the room on top of a circular vinyl tablecloth he’d purchased from the Dollar Store. Beneath the lines he’d inscribed in Sharpie marker, cartoon cows in pearl earrings and frilly aprons toasted each other with wine glasses.

He actually liked the whimsical print. It was a lot less nightmarish than the images he conjured when he read the story Artemisia had mentioned about phylacteries. Something about the size of a guitar peg could hold enough soul to bring someone back from the dead. Or control them if it fell into someone else’s hands.

Mikey Way was gracious enough to answer his phone when Patrick called to thank him, but he demurred. “It’s more Gee’s thing. But listen—don’t get caught up in that shit any more than you have to in order to protect yourself. It—it fucks with your head. You’re good without it. None of you need it.”

“I know,” Patrick replied. “I just need to know enough to avoid it. I don’t want to become an expert or anything.” He wanted to ask Mikey to ask Gerard if they’d ever heard of someone without a whole soul, but Mikey’s next words stopped him.

“If I were you, I’d avoid it altogether. Shit like that—it’s never just a little, and it never leaves you the same. You don’t just…walk away from it, man. It costs and you pay in blood.”

_Used to be a little but a little wouldn’t do it, so the little got more and more_. The old Guns’n’Roses lyric he’d thrown into his own face came back to haunt him. Patrick scrubbed a hand down his cheek. “I never meant to walk into it in the first place, Mikey. It walked into me.”

“Just…be careful, okay? Did Artemisia give you what you need?”

Patrick looked at the book in front of him on his kitchen counter, open to the section on Basics of Circle-Casting. “I sure hope so.” Time would tell. 

Patrick spent too much time reading until he was bleary-eyed until he understood Circles. “This is almost as bad as Geometry,” he said aloud to his empty apartment as he spread yet another round tablecloth onto the floor. This one had a pattern of chickens wearing chef’s hats doing kitchen things. He fixed a string to a pin dug into the wooden surface of the table underneath the cloth, and tied a ballpoint pen to the other end. “And arts and crafts,” he amended. He used the pen to trace a half-circle on the tablecloth, then lengthened the string to draw a larger half-circle behind that. 

“There.” He consulted the book. The vinyl would take the glue and salt and let him peel it back off and wipe up again, and the tablecloth was small enough to roll up and pack in his suitcase. Most importantly, the half-circle was the right size for his plan. He rolled up the cloth and tucked it into the little “go-bag” he’d prepared that contained a canister of Morton’s salt and a bottle of Elmer’s glue.

He finally had the chance to turn back to the music and was working through lyrics for The calls came, this time hot and heavy, piling up in Patrick’s missed-call list. The last one was from Pete so he felt somewhat safe in calling their manager back first. 

“We’ve got a situation.” Bob wasted no time. “Car’s already coming for you.”

“Why can’t I just drive?” Patrick felt stupid for asking when he flipped up the blind in the living room and saw two TV station vans and half a dozen dudes with camera equipment of variable quality across the street from his apartment complex’s front gate. “Son of a—never mind. Blue sedan with an oval sign on the side?”

“That’d be the one. Leave your guitar at home. We’ve already rescheduled the studio hours for the day.”

Tension coiled tight in Patrick’s midsection. He grabbed the little go-bag and tucked the book into it. He knew it was a mistake already when he paused to look in the framed mirror in the front hallway above the table where he dropped his keys, wallet, change, about half a million guitar picks and three cheap electronic tuners. 

“Isn’t it juuuust gloooorious?” His reflection didn’t bother pretending to be anything but Something Else. Yellow eyes glowed with preternatural golden intensity and the sharp smile was a pretty good imitation of one of the better spreads out of the Killing Joke graphic novel. 

Patrick shuddered as he met his reflection’s gaze. “What do you know? And how do you know it?”

“I know my job. I am very good at what I do.” The image in the mirror doffed his cap and ran fingers through Patrick’s thin and shaggy locks, making them stand up on top of his head. Behind his image, the room was a darker reflection and it did funny things to the glint of the light from the front window on his reflection’s hatless head. Patrick knew better than to trust his bad eyesight.

At least, that’s what he told himself.

His reflection continued. “I pick ‘em. Boy, do I pick ‘em good. My boss’ll be so pleased with how much effort he’s putting into this.” Patrick-in-the-mirror examined his nails. Which were longer than Patrick’s own because Patrick knew playing guitar with long nails was a no-no. _Playing guitar with nails as long as those in the mirror would be ridiculous. It’d muddy the sound, kill the cleanliness of the chords, they’d catch on that E string and probably end up tearing_—

Patrick brought his mind back to the relevant. “How much effort who’s putting into this?” He asked the question already suspecting the answer. His phone vibrated with the triple-buzz reserved for Pete. “And putting into what?”

The grin that came out of the mirror was anything but jovial, but the tone of the answer couldn’t melt butter. “I think we shouldn’t ask questions we already know the answers to, and focus on the ones whose answers we still need. Like my question to you. He can only do so much, you know. I can only take so much from him before he begins to…thin. And I think you know already what you can do to keep that from happening.” His reflection licked his lips. “Now then.” He rubbed long-nailed hands together before bringing one up to carelessly flick a lock of hair off his forehead…and caress something decidedly more pointy that Patrick’s own head even at his nerdiest.

A restrained horn beep filtered in from outside, breaking Patrick out of the fine trembling that had started at his ankles and worked up to his knees and now turned his guts to water. His reflection winked. “There’s your ride. When you come back, I’m ready to deal.”

Patrick left his apartment like it was on fire and his fingers were soaked in lighter fluid. As he dove for the open back door of the blue sedan, someone jumped out from behind the half-wall on the side of the building. “Patrick! Mr. Stump! Any comments on your bandmate’s—”

Patrick didn’t register the words. The man surprised him and he lashed out, flailing both arms because his first thought wasn’t “paparazzi” for once. It was “thing in the mirror came out of it and will eat my face.”

He dove headfirst into the back of the car with a startled cry, kicking his legs out behind him in case of pursuit. He landed half in Bob McLinn’s lap, a situation Bob—God love him—took with a grunted, “oof,” and little else (because Bob was an office building and Patrick was pigeon who’d mistaken the plate glass for open air). “Shut it shut it shutit!” he cried, scuttling up against Bob.

Bob reached over and pulled the door shut and for one brief moment, Bob’s mass arched over Patrick, cocooning him in a tunnel of McLinn and safety that he hadn’t felt or needed to feel since the time the stage collapsed at Warped.

**


	10. Interlude III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who does he think he is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have probably fudged a little of the actual events here. I claim artistic license and the keen desire to NOT see the infamous pic in question

_Interlude IV (2006)_

Pete stared at the brightly-glaring website’s hot pink and black background. Flashing text and lurid headlines and the crappy camera phone shot of his torso with the reflection of the flash glaring in the mirror of the bathroom where he’d stood three days ago and let the voice in the back of his head push him open. 

He sat in the dark in his living room, hunched over his laptop and wearing two hoodies, sweatpants, socks, shoes, and a hat under the hoodie hood he’d pulled up over his head. His hair, unwashed, hung down in his face and over one eye, but he only needed the one to see the eye-bleeding headlines splashed across page after page of the browser tabs he had open to all the gossip sites. 

PETE WENTZ NUDES LEAKED

FALL OUT BOY FRONTMAN BARES ALL

ALL OUT BOY (okay he sort of liked that one)

EXPOSED! PETE’S PETER! (that one, not so much. He would have gone with “Peter’s Peter” but the repetitive alliteration was still overkill)

The Sidekick sat next to him, battery drained from ringing and vibrating constantly since last night and screen cracked after he’d thrown it against the wall. In the reflection of his laptop screen, he stared into his own face, reflected on his exposed torso. Possibly the only person in the ever mounting number of hits (shown in the bottom corner next to a little dancing lizard) to be _not _looking at the “money shot.”

Shadows crept up from the corners of the room, snaring around his legs, twisting into the gap between his shirt and the low waistband of his sweats, diving down the neckline of his hoodie and around the back of his neck. “Is this enough?” He spoke to the empty room.

The air thickened around him as the shadows settled on his skin, scouring off a protective layer to expose even more of him to the world for its consumption.

For _Her _consumption.

“I’ve been seen. I’ve paid in pain. I’ve opened myself up to every eye that wanted to look and every finger that wanted to touch,” he mumbled. “It wasn’t like this last month.”

_Last month, you weren’t Grammy-nominated. These things cost, my dear boy_.

“We worked that out. I paid. I pay. I give, you take, She gets Her cut. That’s our Deal.”

The shadows squeezed him in a vise. Pressure weighed him down, cut off his air, stole the strength of his pulse even as his heart beat so loud in his ears he couldn’t hear anything else but the incessant pounding and he just wanted to shut it off—shut everything off.

His pulse slowed. He felt the emptiness creeping in. _You should be used to this by now. It’s what we agreed to_.

“But is it _enough?_” He repeated the question, an edge to his tone. The pill bottle was right fucking there if only he could move and reach it. “Why isn’t it _enough?_” But he couldn’t even look at it. The shadows held his head still, his eyelids pried open so he was forced to watch his own image mocking him from the screen as the numbers in the corner jumped higher and higher.

The silence gave him his answer. _How can you be enough when you aren’t even all there?_


	11. Nostalgic For Disaster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remix of your guts, your insides X-rayed

They went straight to Pete’s house. In the car, Patrick took one look at his phone and the texts from about half a million people coming in, saying, “Holy fuck what did he do?” “You’re his best friend, what the fuck was he thinking?” “Is that really his—”

The car pulled up at Pete’s house. For once, Patrick was grateful that Pete went through a bit of a paranoid phase late last year and had a front gate. The driver opened the gate to pull the car through and Patrick could see more than one TV camera crew van parked along the street and enough of a crowd on the curb that the cops might have to get involved.

Once inside the gate, he saw Joe and Andy waiting in the doorway. Patrick trailed Bob into the house once Bob had popped the lock with his spare key (they all had spare keys, ever since the Best Buy Incident).

The house was dark and smelled rank. Mostly from the kitchen where three days’ worth of old, barely-touched takeout sat in open containers. “Ugh,” Joe muttered quietly as he and Andy immediately started cleaning. Patrick got ahead of Bob on the way down the hall towards Pete’s bedroom. As he passed the mirror in the hallway, he caught a whiff of—brimstone.

He was the first to step into Pete’s room. Bob hung back, giving him a little space without needing to be told (Bob knew how Pete and Patrick worked). Pete was huddled in front of his computer, staring unblinking at screenshots of himself. Patrick’s eyes widened as he stared for exactly one interminable second and felt like a creep (about looking at something he had seen enough times before to recognize it) before dragging his eyes away.

As he looked away, he saw the shadows snaking out from around Pete. He felt the thickness in the air, just like in the occult shop and tasted something thick on the back of his tongue. His hand shot out and he batted one of the flickering things away. His hand passed through, but he felt a tingle—a resistance.

Pete jolted and stared up at him. Patrick forgot about the shadows right then and knelt down next to Pete. “Hey.”

Pete was hugging his knees, face half buried in his grungy sweatpants. He hadn’t shaved and odds were that he hadn’t showered, either. Patrick leaned in and sniffed. Yep—that aroma dragged him right back to the floor of a busted van. Pete’s eyes were shot—deep rings beneath them, puffy eyelids, dull lights in them.

Pete rubbed his face against his knees. “I—” he sucked in a hitched breath through the fabric of his sweatpants, “I—”

Heedless of Pete’s state of stink, Patrick wrapped his arms around his best friend. “I got you,” he murmured.

Pete remained stiff and balled up, unable to really look away from the glow of the lurid website. Patrick stared once more at the flashing frame around the picture, feeling a blush creep up his neck. The caption around it in thick letters read “Fall Out Boy Frontman Pete Wentz has been holding out on us, but we’ve got the goods now! Feast your eyes and eat your heart out!” It was all so—so—

He slammed the laptop lid closed. Maybe a little too hard. The room went dark and Pete started again. This time, his arms wrapped around Patrick’s waist and a tremor went through his entire body. “Patrick. Patrick, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“Hey,” Patrick said, just holding on tight to Pete. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Pete’s entire body tensed, then shuddered loose with a single sob into Patrick’s shoulder. He glanced up to see Bob step away from the doorframe to let in Joe and Andy. The three of them surrounded Pete. Joe and Andy each put a hand on Pete’s back, murmuring words of support.

Patrick had spotted the pill bottle on the desk and flicked his eyes from Andy to the pills. Andy nodded and took the bottle, stretching one arm backwards to Bob.

Pete’s fingers dug into the back of Patrick’s jacket. His neck was soaked, and Pete was mumbling something into his skin that he couldn’t make out so he just murmured soothing words and hummed snippets of the new songs they were working on. He found himself slipping into a minor-keyed ‘Hallelujah,’ mindful of the little bag tucked into his backpack.

Pete held onto him tighter for a few more minutes, Joe and Andy shielding him as well, and then exhaled, releasing the tension in his body and the tension of the moment.

“We good, buddy?” Joe asked quietly.

“Guys, I am so sorry,” Pete mumbled from the front of Patrick’s shirt.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Andy said. “Shame is bullshit.”

“You should hate me. You have to hate me.”

Patrick took him by the shoulders. “Stop that.” He gave Pete a little shake. Pete’s face was blotchy, his eyeliner smudged and his eyes swollen and red-rimmed.

“I’m disgusting,” he mumbled. 

Patrick set his jaw and was about to answer when Joe surprised him and beat him to the punch. “You are that, dude. Fortunately, there’s this great thing called a shower that you can take right now for it.”

Pete barked out a laugh and seemed surprised at himself for it. “Yeah.” He pushed the chair away from the desk. “God, I really am disgusting.”

The three of them backed away and Patrick pulled Pete to his feet. He must have imagined the way Pete felt stuck to the chair. Bob still waited in the doorway. “I’ll be in the living room when you’re ready,” he murmured. “We’ll start figuring out how to approach this.”

“I’ll take out the trash,” Andy said.

“I’m going with him. I need a smoke,” Joe murmured. “You good, Patrick?”

Patrick nodded. “He’s not coming out of that bathroom until he smells like a real boy again and not a wild animal.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Pete grumbled. He looked at the three of them as he shoved his hoodie and his hat off his head. His hair stood up in spikes. “Thanks, guys. I—”

“Talk later, bathe now,” Patrick said firmly, all but shoving Pete into the bathroom. Pete bumped into the wall and jostled a golden sun sculpture hanging on the wall as he passed. When Patrick turned to right it, he realized there was a tiny mirror in the center.

Before he could look away, his reflection flashed to golden eyes. “Glorious, isn’t it? A scandal like this is something She can sink Her teeth into.”

Patrick bared his teeth and hissed at the mirror, moving past hurriedly to catch up to Pete. That fucker in the mirror had everything to do with this, he knew it.

Once Pete was showered and dressed in a clean pair of basketball shorts and a fresh hoodie, Patrick pulled him back out to the living room where the other three waited. Bob was already on his phone, spitting instructions down the line. “No comments, no interviews. The band is hard at work on the next album, period.”

“Send them to falloutboyrock dot com,” Pete said. “We might as well get the traffic while they refresh for updates, right?”

Bob hung up. The next half hour was spent speculating how the leak happened. Pete alternated between standing up and pacing out his anger, and huddling in the corner of the couch next to Patrick. “Look, they were for a girl I thought might be into me. I had no idea they wouldn’t stay private. I don’t—I don’t even remember sending them, to be honest.”

“You don’t?” Bob folded his arms and raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“No, I really don’t.” Pete’s voice was definitely stronger. He didn’t shake anymore when he paced, and his eyes flashed once or twice with the spark Patrick was used to seeing. “Maybe I was hacked.”

“It’s possible.” Bob stood up, evidently having seen the same thing Patrick did. Pete was out of the woods, wouldn’t do anything rash, and had Patrick next to him. “So. What did we learn?”

Pete hung his head. “Don’t take pictures of your junk if you don’t want them to show up on the internet.”

Bob headed out shortly after that, taking Joe and Andy with him. Andy patted Pete. “Look, this isn’t the first dumb thing we’ve done and it won’t be the last. Or the worst.”

“The human body is a beautiful thing,” Joe counseled. “I would man-scape a little more next time, though. Mow the lawn around the tree to make it look bigger, y’know?”

That got a laugh from Pete.

After Patrick firmly shut the door against the cries of “Pete! Pete!” and “Mr. Wentz can you give us a statement!” from over the wall, he eyed Pete. “You want to watch a movie?”

Pete shook his head. He swiped at the countertop in the kitchen, although Joe and Andy had done a good job in cleaning up the mess from the take out containers. “You guys always have to pick up after my messes.” He sighed. “Maybe I should leave the band. Get out of your way. Stop stealing the spotlight away from the music—” Pete’s voice trailed off and he swayed on his feet. 

But Patrick had plenty of energy to categorically reject that idea before it grew legs. “No,” he said firmly. “_Fuck _no.” He strode over to face Pete across the countertop. “You do _not _get to leave this band! There is no—look—I did this for _you!_ I became a singer for _you!_ I moved to Los Angeles where I sweat eleven months out of the year for _you!_” Yes, he was yelling a little bit, and Pete flinched every time he said the word “you,” but he would be _damned_—okay maybe not the best word to use—if he would let Pete punish himself out of the very thing he wanted most and worked hardest for. “You don’t get to run away from—” _me_, “—this! And why the fuck is your nose bleeding?” He stared at the red rivulet that trickled out of Pete’s nose. “I thought you didn’t take anything.”

Pete shook his head. “I didn’t.” He brought his fingers to his face and wiped away the blood, staring down at the crimson stains with a puzzled, bemused expression. “Guess I’m not quitting the band.”

“Damn right you’re not.” Patrick handed him a tissue. The curdled feeling in his stomach receded. “When was the last time you slept?”

Pete shrugged. “Slept well? New York.”

Patrick bit his lip. “Slept at all?”

“Sometime…day before yesterday?” Pete pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge, cracked the lid, and chugged half of it

“Then that’s where you’re going now.” Patrick slung an arm around his best friend’s shoulder and guided him down the hall to the master bedroom.

“You staying?”

He maneuvered Pete into bed, tugging the sheets from the bottom free so that Pete could kick them off when his feet got hot. “I’m staying.”

“With me?” Pete held out a hand.

Patrick brushed his fingers against Pete’s and swallowed. New York was still fresh in his mind. He could feel himself starting to want more again, tugged straight back into Chicago days of car-crash hearts and grenade jumpers and _I can’t let that drive me_.

But saying no to Pete was not something Patrick was especially good at. Or capable of. He crawled into the bed next to his best friend. “Shove over, you’re hogging the pillow.”

Pete immediately wrapped himself around Patrick, burrowing hands, feet, cold nose into any space he could find. Patrick wriggled until he found a comfortable position.

Pete sighed and settled in. “You should let me go,” he said.

Patrick’s arms tightened reflexively. “Like that’s ever gonna happen.”

“From the band. Fire me. You know the label’s going to bring it up. I’m a liability.”

Patrick felt wetness against his shoulder where Pete’s head rested. He found a crumpled tissue on the night stand and brought it up. The tissue came away stained dark even in the dim light shining in from the windows. “You need to not say that anymore, Pete.” _Nosebleeds when he mentions leaving the band. Of course_. It made sense, based on the information in the Artemisia’s books.

“I thought I was taking care of you but I’m just making it worse.” More wet on Patrick’s shirt. This time, though, it was just tears. “I’m so sorry. I’m trying. I can’t—I’m just not enough. There’s not enough of me there.”

“Hey,” he said, more sharply than he intended. His fingers dug into Pete’s arms. “You listen to me, you fucker.” He pressed Pete down into the mattress. In other circumstances, he’d have to be struggling to keep his pants from growing too tight, but right now, it was about something else. “Whatever you think you have to do for us—for this? You are not doing it alone. You are enough. You are _so fucking much_, Pete. God, you have no idea, do you?” It was Patrick’s turn to bury his head in Pete’s neck and just breathe. Clean Pete, exhausted Pete, just Pete.

“Patrick Patrick _Patrick_,” Pete mumbled, wrapping his arms around Patrick and holding him like a blanket. “Don’t let me go, please. Don’t ever let me go.”

Patrick let himself be a human blanket for a full two seconds before lifting up and staring down at Pete. “I won’t.” He searched Pete’s eyes before sliding off and curling the other man into him. He murmured into the dark, this time not just talking to Pete. “You won’t ever be free of me.”


	12. Interlude IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A teenage vow in a parking lot...

_Interlude V (2005)_

Patrick was dragged out of a sound sleep by something tugging at his chest from behind his lungs. _Fuck, I'm having an asthma attack._ He tried to tell himself to wake the fuck up, get to his backpack and his inhaler, somewhere on the floor of his bedroom. 

But when he opened his eyes, the light from a blue and yellow sign glared down on him and instead of the hum of central heating he heard the distant rush of cars and felt clammy night air.

Something cold passed through him, lancing right at the point where his sternum protected his heart. Cold and burning slid between his ribs on either side, like claws bypassing his muscles and bones. "What--what's happening? Is this what a heart attack feels like when you're asleep?" He felt panic--terror and dread and a cold, cold ache deep in his guts, but the presence next to him overrode the worst of it and made him feel like he was observing it from behind a two-way mirror. Seeing himself, feeling the echoes of what he should be feeling, but protected from the worst of it.

It was a small comfort when he felt the claws close around something in his heart and pull. He tried to scream, but the best he could manage was between a wheeze and a whimper, and a bright light filled his vision, the blue and yellow of the Best Buy looming close and blurring out everything in shadow.

The car. _I know that car_. The driver's side door open. An arm hanging limp. The clackety-clatter of tablets in a plastic prescription bottle. _Oh God--Pete!_ In a flash, he was at the car, the dreamscape shifting around him without regard for time or distance or physics. Pete's skin was pale and sick-looking under the blue and yellow light. His breaths were shallow. Patrick could almost taste the humid sheen of sweat coating his skin.

Bands like long, dark claws curved around Pete's slumped form, stripes of shadow that could have been tricks of the weak parking lot lights, or something more. Patrick felt his own chest constrict where the shadows crossed Pete's torso. He could only watch, motionless and trapped in the dreamlike air, as Pete's half-conscious body lightened, distorted. Shriveled in the grip of the shadows that weren't really shadows . _I know these things. I’ve seen them before—_

Patrick remembered a show to a packed venue in a place they hadn’t yet played. A room in a hotel in New York City. A mirror saying things he didn’t want to hear and couldn’t escape. Pete, loopy and semi-conscious. _Kiss me?_

Then everything stopped.

The burning, breathless, wheezing sensation of being a deflated balloon stopped, leaving him with a shallow reserve of air.

And a voice outside his head that echoed in the blue and gold brightness.

“This soul has no mark. You cannot take it. “

“This soul is clearly marked. The Deal was struck.” While spots danced before Patrick’s eyes, he heard his own voice come from somewhere to his left.

“Look again, Collector.”

“Begone, Meddler. You are forbidden to interfere in fair Deals struck between us and them.” 

Internally, Patrick was thrashing, but his body refused to move. That’s my voice! How did he get my voice?

“Your kind strike no fair Deals with them.”

“On the contrary, my kind is forbidden to enter any Deal that does not provide an opportunity for a fair exchange. Your kind saw to that when we first crawled out of the dark and you could not abide our freedom.”

Thin air was making its way into Patrick’s lungs and the clarity that came with lack of oxygen also sharpened his hearing, allowing him to hear slight differences between his own voice and the voice outside himself. His struggle for air also allowed him to make a small, quiet moan of his own that felt oddly reassuring—the other hadn’t completely stolen his voice away.

“Not at the expense of theirs. It is an arrangement that has functioned for aeons. Now look at the soul.”

“I am.” Patrick’s voice-outside-his-body sounded like an older Patrick that was also very annoyed at the interruption.

“Look at the whole soul, Collector. Not just the part in the car.”

“There is no other part! Humans only have one—oh. What sort of trickery is this, Meddler? You are forbidden to interfere!”

“And I have not. Do you see what I see?”

“Impossible!”

“Yet present before both of us. Witnessed by celestial and infernal eyes, spoken of by tongues which cannot lie, an impossibility exists before us. And you, my counterpart, are entangled in it to your deepest core.” 

“This can’t be! She wouldn’t ink a Deal for half a soul! She couldn’t!”

“It appears, though, that She did.” The other voice paused before continuing. “I believe you have a significant impediment to completing your contract at this time.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Patrick’s not-voice approached and receded—its owner must be pacing. Patrick was still trying to put things together. “I can’t collect and this fucker is half-gone, already!”

“It sounds like you have a problem.” The other voice—one which Patrick thought he knew but couldn’t quite place—shifted into a rather sly tone. “Might I offer a solution?”

“Oh, fuck you! That’s my line.”

“But you can’t reel in that line at the moment. Why not delay the collection? More time for you to work out a solution that will adhere to the terms of the Deal without breaking the rules that bind us both.”

“Those unbreakable rules that She apparently broke?”

That was twice that Patrick heard the ‘She’ and his brain noted it. Whoever this ‘She’ was, She’d done something to Pete, and that made Her a “person of interest” in Patrick’s book.

“Nothing exists in complete perfection. Delay your collection and work out a solution. It’s your only option at this point. Should you attempt to collect what has not been signed over, I will be forced to intervene.”

“Yeah? What’s the worst that could happen?” Patrick’s not-voice challenged his counterpart.

“That is what I fear most, my friend. We stand before one impossibility, known at the moment only to us. What do you think happens when word gets out of an impossibility—an imbalance—in the structure of this carefully-balanced and very intricate system we have maintained for aeons? What happens when one tips perfectly-balanced scales upon which the entire universe rests?”

Patrick had lost the thread. For a dream—a nightmare—a visitation—whatever the hell this was, he wanted to protest that his brain was failing to focus on the really important part and that was Pete, hanging half out of his car, with the phone in his hand and Bob McLinn’s voice screaming at him through a tiny, tinny speaker to “Stay with me, man! Ambulance is coming. Don’t let go, my brother. Don’t you dare—”

Meanwhile, the strange voice spoke, this time to Patrick, low and urgent. “I have bought you time and that is all I can give you. In the meantime, you must forget for now. Every problem has a solution, as impossible as some may seem. Should you come into possession of the means and the resources to chart a course that maintains the balance of the universe—break an unbreakable Deal or fulfill the terms of the contract—then you will remember this night.”

Patrick batted feebly at the voice, not quite able to parse what it asked of him. He was still focused on the important part. _Pete is over there, dying! _

But Pete didn’t die—_doesn’t die_, he thought. He knew this somehow, from the future? Pete’s eyes, foggy and unfocused, were nevertheless locked on Patrick’s, wordless and imploring Patrick to be there, on a night that Patrick clearly remembered that he wasn’t.


	13. I'm Like a Lawyer...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...and I will never stop trying to get you off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know where you're going but do you got room for one more mortgaged soul?

Patrick woke from a troubled sleep to find that Pete had finally knocked himself out with exhaustion. Scraps of his dreams came back to him while he eased his deadened arm from under Pete’s dead weight and slipped out of the bed. Things made a lot more sense now. 

Not the least of which was the absence of a lingering guilt he bore for not having taken Pete’s call that night in the Best Buy parking lot. Not that anyone had expected him too—it was the middle of the night and Patrick was not a light sleeper anyway, but he seemed to have this radar for Pete that had him answering Pete’s calls or texts more often than not, and the fact that he’d missed such an important one ate at him. Now he knew why.

He tucked a pillow up against Pete’s sleeping form in case he surfaced and needed a pillow-Patrick substitute. He crept out of the room and retrieved his backpack and headed for the bathroom.

It was time to establish some mother-fucking boundaries.

He turned on the shower, filling the bathroom with steam while he avoided the mirror hanging on the back of the door. He didn’t have a lot of time to work here, so he pulled his tablecloth from the backpack and spread it out on the hallway floor. He rushed a little through squirting the glue between the lines, but he made sure there was plenty of salt sticking to the glue. Then he dragged the tablecloth into the steamy bathroom and closed the door.

He hit the fan and as the steam cleared and the mirror unfogged, he positioned the cloth in front of the mirror, butting it right up against the glass. The half circle’s ends met their reflected counterparts and he stepped inside. Through it all, he seethed with a quiet, determined rage that simmered just below his skin while his brain fitted all the pieces together. 

Finally, the steam cleared enough for the mirror to be clear. Feeling bold, he tapped the mirror. “Knock, knock, asshole.”

His image in the mirror flickered and his eyes went from lake-effect to fiery gold. “Didn’t I tell you it would be glorious? He’ll be the talk of every gossip rag for weeks. All that attention is exactly what She wants and exactly what he agreed to give Her. I do hope you are ready to enjoy the benefits.” His reflection made a face. “I’d hate to have to tell him his efforts have all gone to waste. Especially when he learns what I’ve got planned for next month.”

Patrick scowled at his reverse-image. “You’re not planning anything for next month. He’s out there, torturing himself over this!”

His reverse shrugged. “No such thing as bad publicity when it comes to Her. She likes the attention any way She can get it. Her rates aren’t unreasonable, but she does expect to be paid on time. And in return, the right things will happen for you. So whaddya say? Ready to make a Deal?”

Patrick swallowed. He had no idea if this would work, or if he would get sucked into some…horrible…place. But it was clear from Pete’s behavior—once Patrick had really put the pieces together—that Pete was already at his limit. Whatever his reflection had done to Pete was killing him slowly as he killed himself for attention. And Patrick really couldn’t allow that to happen to the other half of his soul. “Fine, let’s Deal. Here are my terms.”

His mirror image laughed, a loud peal that rang through the bathroom over the sound of the shower. “Oh, you have some balls on you! I like it! But that’s not how it works, Peanut Butter Cup. _I_ set the terms of the Deal. _You _agree to them, we both go away happy and meet back here every month when it’s time for you to pay the bill.”

“Not this time.” Patrick bared his own teeth. In a very deliberate move, he lifted his leg and took one careful step back, outside the circle of salt. His ears popped and he heard the sound of a guitar string breaking—complete with the zazzing sound of the string’s surface ridges rubbing against the other strings and whatever metal contacts it touched to produce feedback. The circle snapped into place. Patrick’s nose-hairs twitched as he faced his now-stunned reflection.

“What the fuck—”

Patrick folded his arms. “Now you get to be freaked out when your mirror image flips you off.” He did, in fact, flip the him in the mirror off. “You are bound, demon, in my circle, and by my will. And so help me, God, you will abide in truth with me or be banished from this plane. Are we clear?”

“What— How— This isn’t— This isn’t fair!” His reflection beat against the glass and for one sickening moment, the solid surface bent and warped and Patrick watched his own face twist into an enraged snarl. Two ridges appeared between his brows in a V-shape, leading up to delicate horns that popped out from his hair, curling in the steamy air. “How dare you!”

The mirror snapped back as the demon tested the limits of Patrick’s will. Patrick held himself careful and still, but implacable. “You like your new digs? A little trick I learned because your kind seems to like messing with people who don’t understand just what you are. My money says that’s exactly what happened with Pete. But my question is why you’re so interested in me. And you’re going to answer that question.”

When Patrick stepped out of the circle, because his image had been surrendered to the—_just say it, he’s a demon_—the demon, the reflection couldn’t take that same step back, leaving his mirror image—_the demon_—fully trapped in a circle made complete by the presence of the mirror. And as he watched, the demon put it together as well. “You tricked me!”

_Holy shit it worked!_ “_You _were going to trick _me_.” Patrick tapped his foot. “I’m waiting for an answer to my question.”

His image shook his head. “I can’t believe you did this! I show up at the perfect time for you, offer you exactly what you so desperately want—what you _need_—I prove to you how much I can do and you—you put me in a cage like a stray animal! I am _genuinely _hurt! All I wanted to do was help—”

“Dude, shut up.” Patrick slapped the side of the sink. “You are bound in truth. And you’re going to tell me exactly what deal Pete made, with whom, and when.”

“Bore you with the details, you mean.” The demon huffed. “Fine, fine. My mistress is what everyone in this town most craves. This is Her town and She’s the closest face of God this town will ever get to. I should point out that She, like any of us, can only do business with the willing. Your boy was not in any way, shape, or form coerced. He was offered a Deal, and he took it.”

“Just who is She anyway?”

“We don’t dance lightly with names around here, Mister.” His reflection stuck his tongue out at him. It was longer than Patrick’s own tongue, and pointy at the end. “But She’s what everybody in this town chases. What everybody craves.”

“Fame?” Patrick guessed. “Infamy?”

“Infamy is so much better than Fame, Blow Pop. But She is so much bigger than those two. You know Her as Celebrity. Fame, Infamy, and everything in between. Memory and Immortality all wrapped up in adoration and fed by attention.”

God it makes perfect sense, he thought. Even back in Chicago in shitty basement bars and people’s living rooms, Pete had been craving attention. Naturally drawn to notoriety. He was the perfect mark. “What are the terms?”

“Simple. He gave himself to Her, and in exchange, She opens doors for your band.”

Patrick’s stomach twisted. Had Pete really been desperate enough to think they needed help? Nothing Pete had ever said to him had ever been anything but certain that they would make it. Even when they were playing to two dozen people in a bingo hall in North Dakota. “So that Grammy nom? The hit songs? They were all—fake?”

His reflection looked insulted. “Shut your mouth, Patrick Stump! None of that was _fake! _We have influence, but we don’t rig the game. That’s not how it works. Look.” His reflection plopped down and sat cross-legged on the floor, still contained by the circle. “The graveyards are full of undiscovered talent and un-credited genius. You know as well as anyone how much luck played in getting you where you are. You could still be rattling around the Midwest in that broken-down van, playing bars and Knights of Columbus halls, except for the right ears that heard the right music at the perfect time. Consider us…facilitators. A nudge here, a tweak there.”

Patrick still felt sick, but marginally less so. He ignored the flash of longing for that van again, of rolling through miles of deserted highway with dreams in their heads and Pete’s head in his lap, and warped cassette tapes playing the same Bowie songs over and over. “How does he pay?”

“He’s Hers. He’s tied his soul to Her.” The demon grinned. “He seeks attention and pays Her in the attention. Like I said the other night—it doesn’t matter how that attention comes, whether it’s from accolades or humiliation. She’s not picky. But She _is _hungry, and She must be fed.” It chilled Patrick to see his own face take such delight in Pete’s pain. And a small part of him insisted, _but he’s mine, not Hers_. His next thought was to ask exactly how Pete “paid” what he owed, but Patrick wasn’t ready to know. What mattered was the confirmation of what he’d been putting together since the Grammys in drips and drabs.

“What else?” The demon said. “You’ve got to let me out of here some time.”

Patrick arched an eyebrow. “Do I?”

“You know you do.” It was the demon’s turn to glower and Patrick felt a little satisfaction, he had to admit.

“Tell me why this ‘payment’s’ costing him so much.”

“That, I cannot say.”

“I asked. You’re in my circle. You have to tell me.”

The demon shrugged. “I literally can’t, dude. I’m forbidden unless it’s directly addressed.” He offered an insincere smile with Patrick’s face. “Rules are a bitch, huh?”

It was time for Patrick to play a card from his hand. “Is it because he's missing part of his soul?”

His reflection jumped, slapping a hand against his chest. “Fuck me, you _knew?_”

Patrick decided to be truthful. “Not until very recently. But it certainly answers the question as to why you’re so interested in me.”

“It’s become harder to get the payment out of him, which is very much not par for the course.” The demon spread his hands and showed off the talons at his fingertips. “We pride ourselves on excellent customer service and highly efficient extraction. Pete is…a complication. Shouldn’t have even come up as a viable client, to be honest.”

Patrick lifted an eyebrow. “Mistakes were made and all that?”

His reflection had the grace to look sheepish. “You could say that. Glitch in the Matrix, Ghost in the Machine, as it were. But we have to deal with it now.”

“Well, _you _have to deal with it. And Pete. It’s not really my problem, is it?” He felt slimy just saying the words, but he had a goal in mind.

“Wow. Cold.“ The demon narrowed his gold eyes at Patrick. “It shouldn’t hurt him so much, and for that, I truly am sorry.”

Patrick squinted at the demon and his own altered features shifted into a softer, slightly puzzled expression. “I don’t hate him, you know,” the demon said softly. “I’m actually a bit of a part of him. Specially grafted at the Deal’s inception to make extraction customized and efficient.” The demon lifted his head. “You, on the other hand, I could slap once or twice.”

Patrick’s chin jutted out. “We share that sentiment.”

“Now you know. So what’s the plan, Snickers? You could help him, you know. Make a Deal with me and the books will be clean on our end.”

“Not gonna happen,” Patrick retorted. “_You _are going to make a Deal with _me_.”

It was his reflection’s turn to lift an eyebrow. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the forehead ridges and the horns peeking out from his disaster-area hair. “Hey, who’s on what side of the mirror, here?”

Patrick braced himself against the sink. “Listen. The way I see it is that we’re both on the same side, at least for some of this. You were there when the, uh, other guy said that balance had to be kept, right?”

The demon’s eyes cleared, flashing bright copper-gold as his expression brightened. “You do remember! Listen, I’m sorry about that whole collapsing-your-chest thing.”

Patrick waved his hand. “Whatever, I get it. But you can’t keep taking from Pete like this. And you can’t have me. The ang—”

“Meddler,” the demon interrupted him.

“The other guy said that there _is _a way forward, but we have to find it.” Patrick spread his hands out. “So here’s my proposal. I could let you flail around and keep beating the shit out of my best friend while you try to throw more desperate attempts at me to get me to ink a Deal I’m never gonna agree to. Or—” he held up a hand at the demon’s protest. “Yes, I know you’re very good at your job, but I am very good at being stubborn as fuck—ask Pete—and you will not win this one. So as I was saying, or we can work together and try to figure a way through this mess that will allow Pete to meet his obligations without turning into a zombified husk, Celebrity to get what she needs, and you to keep out of all the rest of my mirrors.” He fixed the demon with a look. “Because he’s still the bassist and principal lyricist of my band and you do not come for my band.”

“Your idea is intriguing. I could do a ride-along.”

Patrick pulled out a guitar peg dangling from a leather string he had appropriated for just this purpose. “Oh, there are some conditions,” he said, running his thumb along the sigils he’d carved into the rosewood with an X-acto knife. He’d taken a(nother, cleaner) knife to nick a spot just beneath his breastbone. The blood that welled up from the cut soaked into the etched markings and disappeared into the rosewood. Patrick felt the thrum of the binding humming through his fingertips.

“Ooh! The key to your heart. I don’t know what to say. I mean, we haven’t even been dating for very long—”

“Not a chance, bub. You’re not my type.” Patrick glowered. “This is what you ride along in.” He stepped into the circle. “I know you can fit. As long as I carry this on my person, you can ride along in the passenger seat, so to speak.”

“I could be out there? In you?” Eyebrows waggled. “Kinky.”

Patrick rolled his eyes. “I mean, it’s gotta be easier getting all that sweet, sweet attention from the source, right? No having to pull it through the mirror or the—what did you call it again?”

“The inferno-static barrier.” The demon tilted his head. “This is awfully generous of you. Giving me space in the empty part where the rest of your soul should be.”

“It’s really not,” Patrick retorted. “I’m not giving you any soul. You’re merely…renting out some space where one part of it should be. In exchange, you ease up on Pete. Isn’t that how it works?”

The demon blinked. “It sounds…like a really good idea. I’d be tucked right up next to the other half of the soul. The closer the halves are to each other, the stronger it is.” The demon gave him a frank look. “That’s why he keeps inviting you out to all those places to be seen with him, even if he doesn’t realize it. The closer you are, the more he can give.”

The truth of that—and the consequences inherent within—jolted through Patrick with a combination of dread and a kind of bittersweet affection. “We always work better together,” he mumbled. He held out the guitar pin close to the mirror. “In you go.”

The demon cocked his head. “You really do,” he said, his voice—Patrick’s voice—soft with wonder. His fingers came up close to the mirror’s surface. As it rippled, he murmured, “You really do.” Claws broke through the mirror and touched the guitar peg. Patrick’s reflection rippled, flashed, disappeared for a second, then reappeared as mundane and lifeless as the cold glass itself.

The guitar peg, however, warmed in his hand. Patrick slipped the string over his head and tucked the peg under his shirt. “Of course we do,” he said to his reflection, which mimicked him. Against his chest, he felt the presence of the demon, sliding in under his skin, looking out from behind his own eyes. It was a small presence. Like having his in-ears plugged directly into his brain. “We mortgaged our souls for each other.”

**

**Author's Note:**

> Mortgaged Souls is a big, sprawling AU in my mind (and in my drafts). There will be more as we trip through the history of the band and see just how things play out behind the scenes.


End file.
